


P.P.S. I Love You

by Pemm, PreludeInZ



Series: First, Do No Harm [2]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Recovery, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 100
Words: 127,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/pseuds/Pemm, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well, is that you in front of me?<br/>Coming back for even more of exactly the same,<br/>You must be a masochist to love a modern leper on his last leg. </p><p>—THE MODERN LEPER, Frightened Rabbit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. EPILOGUE: Threesomes & Cake

**Author's Note:**

> Pemm here!
> 
> Like its precursor _Hold Still_ , _P.P.S. I Love You_ takes some explanation.
> 
> After I had finished and posted the end of _Hold Still_ , I had intended that to be it. I had even written a "good end" I posted for a short while because I hate leaving characters without hope. Fortunately, [PreludeInZ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ) bulled her way in with her own happy ending, and it was much, much better than mine. It was also a great deal longer, so long and so full of so many ideas that were just begging to be properly written that we started doing that, too.
> 
>  _P.P.S._ 's expanded scenes—originally called snapshots—were a hell of an experiment. Like _Hold Still_ , they were an exercise in freewriting and seeing what happens, while also being our love letter to the hurt/comfort genre (and my apology to Scout). They were posted in the order in which they were written, and are not always chronological. Arcs are usually (but not always) noted.
> 
> If you like this and HS, you might enjoy our meta tags over on tumblr. ([Corgi's](http://theoldaeroplane.com/tagged/hold%20still%20meta), [Prelude's](http://1fort-2fort-redfort-blufort.tumblr.com/tagged/hold%20still%20meta).) Either way, thanks for reading!

_by PreludeInZ_

 

 _Now it’s here and it’s warm and bright_  
 _I can’t sleep I worry through the night_  
 _When I see what the curtains hide_  
 _In the morning I’ll detest the sky_  
 _Makes me feel like I’ve just been born_  
 _But I’m braced for feeling old and worn_  
 _I can’t feel what used to thrill my head_  
 _That the drilling will return I dread_  
 _And I’m so sick of the sunshine baby_  
 _Cuz it burns my skin_  
 _And I’m so sick of the sunshine  
_ _Tell me when the storms roll in_

—SUNSHINE, Cosmo Jarvis.

 

* * *

 

Miss Pauling had never planned on having children. Miss Pauling had actively taken steps to avoid having children. Children were terrible. They were loud and constantly dirty and they didn’t do what they were told. She would never quite understand how she’d ended up with the pair of them.

When TFI had folded up, she hadn’t expected to be left with a pair of broken orphans. The mercs were eminently hirable. She’d helped most of them along with the transition to other organizations, she had plenty of connections. Spy and Medic had been snapped up almost immediately. The others were a bit more particular, but Miss Pauling was determined and she’d found something for almost everyone. There’d been the two of them left over, the two youngest. Well, naturally. They hadn’t been at it as long as their peers, they didn’t have the same kinds of reputations. Miss Pauling could still help with that. Any letter of recommendation she signed off on was pretty much as good as gold. A ticket anywhere they might have wanted. Except Scout and Pyro hadn’t seemed to have anywhere else to go, or anyone but each other. Problematic.

Pyro had a sister. He had exploded at Miss Pauling when she’d mentioned this, though, a terrifying storm of fury and paranoia, shouting and screaming and swearing at her. It had been Scout who’d gotten between the two of them, practically shoving Miss Pauling out of the conference room where they’d met, talking his friend down, coaxing and cajoling. She’d been badly shaken by the encounter, though she wasn’t about to show it. She’d always liked Pyro, he was sweet and cultured. They had chatted, more than once, about books and movies. They’d both gone to art school, though Miss Pauling had realized a lot sooner than he had that it really wasn’t for her, and diverted into a business college. She’d known Pyro had issues, but she’d never known them to be this close to the surface.

Scout had a mother, Miss Pauling knew that. But he’d stepped outside, once Pyro had cooled off. Apologized for him. Told her that Pyro just needed a few minutes on his own, and that he hadn’t meant anything by it. She’d made an offhanded comment, and Scout had just broken down completely. She’d only asked if he was going back to Boston. Casually, just making conversation. She’d known Scout was kind of high strung, and that he’d only gotten worse towards the end of his employment. The limp, too. That was prominent. She hadn’t noticed until he and Pyro had joined her in the conference room, to discuss options. Was that new? Jesus.

Maybe it really hadn’t been the job for him, even if he’d done it for years. He hadn’t always been this way. He’d used to laugh at everything, flirt with her constantly, show off at every opportunity. Miss Pauling had felt utterly awful, realizing that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d even seen him smile. And now, with his face buried in her shoulder, not even trying not to cry. Something was really, really wrong. She’d patted his back. Awkward at first, but then getting over her inhibitions and just holding him, gently rubbing her fingers through his hair and talking quietly. Her natural instincts didn’t tend towards the motherly, but there wasn’t anyone else there to do anything and Scout was stirring up some sort of empathetic, nurturing impulse she hadn’t realized she had. Miss Pauling had even given him a soft, gentle kiss on the forehead.

And then Pyro had come out, and taken over, kisses and all. That had been the last thing in the world she’d expected, and suddenly she saw the pair of them much, much differently. Her heart broke a little. There was clearly a lot more going on here than she realized.

Maybe she should have paid them all a bit more attention. Well, she couldn’t just leave them like this.

 

* * *

 

Miss Pauling was the sort of person who’d made a five year plan. She had a ten year plan to follow on top of that. In ten years, she had planned to be running a bed and breakfast out in the Pacific Northwest. Miss Pauling had made a plan to retire, at the end of her career, to a small farm she’d bought out in Oregon, about an hour outside of Portland. Old, cheap. It bordered up on a thick, woodsy plot of land. It was overcast for the majority of the year. The two storey farmhouse was livable, but in need of repair. Basic things. Miss Pauling knew her way around a two by four. Mostly. Well, and now she had two extra pairs of hands attached to two people who were used to taking her orders. That would help. It could be an eight year plan. In her spare time she would learn how to cook.

She’d bundled her two orphan murderers into the cab of her purple truck, packed all their things in the bed of it, and they’d driven to Oregon. Pyro had insisted that Scout sit in the middle. He wouldn’t hear of him sitting by the passenger side door. Miss Pauling didn’t want to ask why. She and Pyro traded turns at the wheel. Scout couldn’t drive because Scout wouldn’t sleep for more than half an hour at a time, and as a result he sometimes blacked out a little. It was a twenty-one hour drive, and they made it in a single go.

Miss Pauling flattered herself that Scout got a little less fidgety, a little less anxious, when she switched places with Pyro just past the state border into Utah. She had bullied him, just gently, until his arm was over her shoulder across the back of the seat, and she had bunched up her jacket, wedged it up against his collarbone, laid her head down against it. Made it explicitly clear that it was just because it was more comfortable than trying to get necessary rest with her head against the rattling passenger side window. Secretly, because Scout just really seemed like he needed to be held. She had fallen asleep to the sound of the pair of them, talking softly. Pyro liked to drive. He drove for a long time, double the shift she’d planned for him. That was okay.

She hadn’t been aware of it, but once she’d dropped off, Scout had looked over at Pyro, and smiled, just the barest, tiniest bit.

 

* * *

 

Miss Pauling did not actually know her way around a two by four, unless she was beating someone to death with it. Thankfully Scout and Pyro both seemed to be at least passably handy.  And the farmhouse she had bought was in worse shape than she remembered. The three of them were pretty much just camping for the first month. It took that long to fix the roof. In some ways that wasn’t so bad.

The pair of them, though. God, whatever it was, it was nightmarish and complicated, and part of her didn’t want to know. Miss Pauling had initially had the impression that it was Pyro who had decided to stay around for Scout’s sake. Scout seemed obviously fragile, jumpy and limping and clingy. Damaged. Pyro, though. That had always been the thing about Pyro. On the surface he looked fine. He could fly into fits of terrifying rage and temper, dissociative flights that really, properly scared her. She’d locked herself in the bathroom, more than once, just really afraid of Pyro.

Scout was afraid of loud noises and sudden movements and that there was someone else in the house. He was afraid of the dark and afraid of the forest the property butted up against the tumbledown garden and afraid to go too long without being touched by someone. He was afraid of snakes and rabies and of being chased. In spite of this, he was starting to sleep a bit better, stretches of two or three hours at a time, but he was really, really afraid of waking up alone.

Scout wasn’t afraid of Pyro, though. Even if Pyro had an axe or a blowtorch and could go from calm and tranquil to frothing and insane in moments, Scout never failed to face him down.

Miss Pauling didn’t know how to help either of them, except to make sure they both had somewhere to stay, and that there was food around, and to let them have each other. She gave them plenty of space, never made a big deal out of it. Whatever they needed. Primarily, she made it her mission to make them both feel useful. Well, more than just feel useful. Miss Pauling realized she had been far, far too ambitious, thinking she could fix up a crumbling old farmhouse in the Pacific Northwest all on her own. None of them really knew what they were doing, but Miss Pauling took out books from the library and went into town and bought lumber and nails and paint, and did what she did best, which was research and boss people around.

In her spare time she taught herself baking. Cooking became, surprisingly, Scout’s department. He had a knack for it. Baking, though. Baking was orderly and sensible and Miss Pauling liked cake. So there was a lot of cake, and pie, and muffins, and cookies. Pyro especially was happy about that.

One time Scout had worked up the nerve and asked to go into town with her. He’d been cagey about it, but he’d come back with brushes and an easel and oil paints for Pyro. Miss Pauling had just about cried, it was so sweet. The house began to fill up with art.

The old place started taking shape. The property was beautiful, gently rolling hills and a dark, muffled forest. Scout liked it because it was quiet and he was learning to keep track of where the other two were and nobody snuck up on him. Pyro liked it because it was overcast most of the time and he could go around unhooded or masked if he wanted to. Miss Pauling liked it because it was all hers, and no one was fighting over it. Well. mostly hers. She could share.

 

* * *

 

It was Scout she’d always thought had a crush on her, but it was Pyro she slept with first. Slept with was the wrong way to put it. Fucked. Just fucked him, because there’d been mounting sexual tension for months and when the storm had broken it had been raw and brutal and hot. It had been the height of summer, late August. And goddamnit, she was there too. Why should she get left out?

And he was fucking gorgeous and amazing in bed. Scout wasn’t naturally selfish, there was more than enough of Pyro to go around. So it became a regular thing. Miss Pauling had had a similar arrangement with Bidwell, during almost her entire time at TFI. Bidwell in bed was best described as lukewarm, though. Pyro was incredible and uncontrollable and hot. Fire. Bidwell had left her feeling bored and frequently disappointed. Pyro left her wonderfully, beautifully bruised and aching. Bidwell had been like a habit. Pyro was like an addiction.

Scout she slept with, not even a week later. Just to balance things out, initially. Because he and Pyro were actually terrible bedmates, and Pyro got sick of him sometimes. The one circumstance in which Scout couldn’t handle his friend/lover/keeper’s temper was in the dark, at night, when he hated loud noises and sudden movements the most, and when he really just couldn’t stand to be alone.

Pyro had nearly yanked the door of their bedroom off its hinges, and kicked Scout into the hallway. Miss Pauling had already been woken up by the yelling, and after a few minutes, she had poked her head out of her own bedroom door, and then padded out in her nightgown, taken Scout by the hand, and pulled him in after her.

Balance was really what she had, between the both of them. Because Pyro needed to be dominant, needed to be powerful and in control of her. Miss Pauling adored that, it was thrilling. Scout needed, a lot more desperately than Pyro did, to be held and reassured and cared for. He just liked to be touched by someone who he trusted not to hurt him. Even then, it had been nearly Halloween before he stopped flinching away, when she gently traced her finger over the scars on every part of him, until he dropped off to sleep. There was no way in the world this job had netted him this many scars. She never wanted to find out what had, she just did her best to take care of him, when she could.

He was profoundly, expertly grateful. And she could make him smile, a triumphant crooked grin, blue eyes looking up at her from between her bare knees. Miss Pauling was getting to be really fond of Scout.

Once the line had been crossed in both directions, things started to get really, interestingly muddled up between the three of them. Miss Pauling had to look up the state laws about this sort of thing. It was probably good that they were largely ignored by the rest of the world, because probably they could have gone to prison.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t all cake and threesomes.

Their second summer, and it was wildfire season. The forest behind the property became something worth being afraid of. It had been a disconcertingly dry summer, and Pyro had made Scout and Miss Pauling both do drills about firebreaks and wind direction and how to tell when a situation was hopeless. He’d made them both swear that if the wind went in the wrong direction and turned towards their home, they would know when to give it up for lost. Pyro kept the truck packed with emergency supplies, and some of the things they didn’t want to lose. Canvases, mostly, some of Miss Pauling’s books. Scout had taken to collecting old baseball memorabilia, he’d picked a few of his favourite things, but mostly didn’t seem bothered by the notion of losing any of it.

When the fire they’d been ready and waiting for started, Scout and Miss Pauling had known exactly what to do, and had done what they’d been told. Pyro hadn’t warned them that he might just drop everything and walk into the woods, towards the distant smudge of smoke rising above the trees.

That hadn’t been part of the plan. Scout and Pauling had both had to stop each other going after him, had to do all the things they’d told him to, while frantically worrying that he wouldn’t come back.

But he did. Sunburned and disheveled and apologetic, covered in ashes, two days later, when the fire had shifted away from them. There had been shouting and tears and forgiveness and make-up sex. A thunderstorm had swept down from the mountains, had rained the fire out. They’d all curled up together inside, with movies and hot chocolate and a grateful weariness that it was over.

 

* * *

 

Three years later and Scout still wrapped his hands. Neither Pyro nor Miss Pauling ever saw him do it, nor had they ever seen him with his wrists and palms bare. Miss Pauling and Pyro had talked about it once. Now that they’d noticed, it seemed odd. A little worrisome. Scout was kind of obsessive about his hands. Curiosity getting the better of her, one night Miss Pauling had waited until he was asleep—Scout could sleep through just about anything, these days—and she’d gently, delicately unwound the bandages.

She’d had to run and get Pyro, because Scout’s hands and wrists, back and front,  were just in ribbons of raw, fresh cuts and deep, old scar tissue. Clean, razor sharp lines. Palmistry. Love and life lines in dark, fresh red and old, dead silver.

Miss Pauling had watched the temper flare and then die out of Pyro. That was definitely new. She got to watch him forgive Scout, and it was a long time coming. She joined in, not that either of them needed any of her forgiveness, but just to be holding the both of them, her poor broken boys.

Pyro had taken the truck, the next morning. He’d been gone for three hours, into the city. He’d combed through a handful of the more ethnic neighbourhoods, and come back with a brown paper bag full of powdered henna. He’d mixed up a paste, smeared it carefully into a waxed paper cone, snipped off the end. Cradled Scout’s right hand in his lap, and made whorls and dots and lines, just abstraction. He’d spent nearly an hour on it. Then he’d handed the little paper cone over, and let Scout try it out on the left hand.

Scout cut his hands less often after that.

 

* * *

 

Miss Pauling still owned a gun. a silencer. Actually, between the three of them, there were a lot of guns in the house. And axes. And Pyro had built a flame thrower, for keeping up maintenance of the broad firebreak between the house and the forest. It was probably for the best that they had mutually given up on the bed and breakfast idea. It wasn’t like they needed the money. They certainly didn’t want the company. The trio had relaxed that rule only a few times, rare exceptions made when one of the other mercs wanted to visit. Heavy and Sniper had both been by. Demo had stayed with them nearly a month. Spy had dropped in, but only to petition Scout to go see his mother, or at least call or write. This hadn’t accomplished anything, and it had been a bad end to their fourth spring.

Miss Pauling had gotten the original story out of them, four years after the fact, in late November. She’d needed to get them both roaring drunk, and the pair of them still hadn’t wanted to talk about it. She had been grimly, furiously sorry that she’d asked. Because Miss Pauling hated loose ends, and she couldn’t let something like that lie.

Miss Pauling bought a plane ticket.

Miss Pauling knew how to get a gun across international borders. Miss Pauling knew how to kill a man quickly, efficiently, and without a great deal of fuss. Miss Pauling needed about two days, counting travel time. She was gone for a week and a half.

But she was back in time for Christmas, and she’d brought presents. Just small things, tokens. Totems, more accurately. She had gotten them each a keychain, one wrought in silver for Pyro, gold for Scout. Miss Pauling had a bit of a morbid streak, because these were definitely human molars. Scout’s had had dental work done on it at some point, a weird, greyish metal amalgam marring the yellowed ivory surface. European, she mentioned, because that was the sort of thing Miss Pauling knew about. She herself had a pair of earrings. Irregular, off-white. Freshwater pearls, she had said. Pretty, Scout had lied.  Human teeth, Pyro could tell.

None of them mentioned it again.

 

* * *

 

He hadn’t cut himself in nearly a year, but then he’d downed a half bottle of aspirin in the barn, and Pyro had found him, and he’d been half gone before they’d gotten to the hospital. Gastric lavage, sedation. A room overnight, at least overnight. The psych ward, if he’d consent to it, in the morning. If he wouldn’t, neither Pyro nor Miss Pauling had the correct legal relationship to commit him against his will. And they both knew he wouldn’t. His arms covered up to the elbows in dark henna, frenetic, repeating patterns, jagged lines and dark voids. Maybe that had been a warning. His fingers twitched, his eyelids flickered occasionally, but there were still a few hours worth of thorazine left in him, and he was nowhere near waking up.

Miss Pauling had pulled her chair right up to the edge of the bed, gently fingering the lines below the dye, crisscrossing the palm of Scout’s hand. None of them were fresh anymore. She had pushed her glasses up on her forehead, her eyes were red rimmed and tired. “I just feel sick. I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming. Jesus. Have you looked at this? Really looked? There are probably four layers of different designs here, he just hasn’t stopped.” She bit her lip. “I knew it wouldn’t be the sort of thing he’d ever get over, not really. Both of you, I know I’ll never really understand, but I always at least tried…I just tried to make things easier for you. I don’t know what else I should’ve done. Is it…is it like the last time he tried to kill himself? God, that was five years ago, and you said he was doing it almost daily when it was at its worst. Respawn must have just left him a wreck every time, but…I mean, I had no idea what to look for.”

Pyro was sitting on the bed. He was grim, his jaw set, quiet. He had wasted a lot of his anger blaming himself, and now he just wanted a solution. He had a hand protectively on the side of Scout’s neck. “He didn’t try to kill himself. Scout knows how to kill himself, there’s nothing in the world he’s better at. He’s hung himself, he’s shot himself, he’s cut his wrists, he’s jumped off Hightower. If Scout wanted to die, Scout would be dead. I think he needs help, and he doesn’t know how else to ask.”

They sat in silence for a few hours, both thinking. Then it was Miss Pauling’s idea. She could only think of one thing that would help. It was Pyro who seized upon it, and between them it kindled into a solution.

 

* * *

 

They’d each picked one of Pyro’s paintings. The rest stayed on the walls, or were stacked in the barn. They’d loaded the truck up with whatever else seemed precious, worth keeping and remembering after five years, exactly. Harvested the last of what was good from the garden, they’d already saved a lot of it for seeds, next year. There were gallons of kerosene, poured all throughout the beautiful whitewashed interior of the farmhouse.

Pyro had refreshed the firebreak, this time to protect the forest. They had a few good bottles of wine, an old, expensive bottle of scotch, a long ago gift from Demo. Miss Pauling had made a cake. Scout had made fried chicken, and everything incidental to it, a particular specialty of his. It was a picnic.

She had stolen a map from the library, pinned it to the farmhouse door. They threw darts until they liked where one landed. Wisconsin.

They burned it down. They were on the road the next morning. Miss Pauling would take the first shift, Pyro the second, Scout third. They sat in order. Scout rolled the window down when they reached the highway, rested his arm, really tattooed now, on the cool metal. Grinned.

There were worse things than starting fresh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, well, this is Prelude. Let me see what I can say about this. I'm not sure you understand.
> 
> You know when you work with somebody? Like, you're sort of casual acquaintances, you do work in the same field, you both respect each other, you're both at about the same level, careerwise. And you chat, and you get along, and one day she mentions that she's going out of town for a week. And you're like "oh, do you need someone to water your plants, feed your fish?" And she's like "Sure, that'd be great!"
> 
> You know about her house, you know it's a nice house. You've admired it from afar, and that one time you went over for a barbecue, you sort of noticed that it was pretty nice. So you kind of know your way around her house. You go over to feed the fishes. You poke around a little bit. Really, what a dang nice house. Shoot. Damn. Whoa. She's got really great taste--similar to your taste, obviously, that's what makes it great.
> 
> Probably she wouldn't mind if you just sort of housesat, for the week. No charge, even. The fishes might be lonely. You'd really better stay. Don't sleep in her bed, that would be weird. Just the couch is fine, what a comfy couch. It's just for a week. She'll never know you were there, you'll leave it just like you found it.
> 
> Now, imagine, when she gets home a couple days early, instead of CALLING THE FUCKING POLICE, she is just like "hey! you should move in!" And you're like "COOL. I ALREADY BROUGHT ALL MY DVDS AND THE CONTENTS OF MY FRIDGE OVER, THIS'LL SPARE ME BRINGING THEM BACK. I HAVE A PING PONG TABLE, WHERE DO YOU WANT ME TO SET IT UP?"
> 
> Anyway, that's about the gist of this experience. Thanks, Pemm :D


	2. this argument again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #1 - "this argument again" - by Pemm.

“Oh, I’m _sorry_ ,” Scout said shrilly, half-laughing, “yeah it was just as bad for you wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? I got nothin’ on you, gettin’ tortured every other fuckin’ day, fuck nah—”

“I’m not having this argument again.”

“Oh, fuck you, Pyro,” Scout snapped. “Just fuck you, you know that, I did fucking all of that f-for you and this—”

He shut up as Pyro turned on him, dangerously close. His teeth were grit, his gums almost bloody red against his pale skin, the furrows in his brow half-lost among his freckles. “Scout,” he said through a dangerously thin veil of control, “I am not. Having. This conversation again, not right now. Not with Pauling right out—”

“You’ve sure been talkin’ about her a lot.”

“… Scout—”

“What? _What_?” Scout said, flinging his arms out. He nearly knocked over the lamp. “Fine! Fuckin’ fine! Go talk to her, do it, be my fuckin’ guest. Give her the time while you’re at it, I watch you two eye-fuck each other every day anyway, fucking go get it over with so I can leave!”

_“Scout!”_

But Scout had already turned and begun stalking away with hunched shoulders, his breathing rapid and hiked and ugly.


	3. about eleanor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #1.5 - "about eleanor" - by Pemm.

**5GORGE - RED BASE - 197X**

* * *

 

There was the matter of the nightmares. The two of them kept to their own rooms at night because the beds were too small and Scout and Pyro were both sort of terrible bedmates (Scout kicked in his sleep and hogged blankets, Pyro slept lightly and was an absolute bastard if woken in the middle of the night), but when Scout had one evening begged him to stay Pyro had relented. Scout did not beg. Seeing him do so had bothered Pyro so much he had said yes just to get him to stop as much as he had to assuage his fears.

When Pyro had jerked awake in the middle of the night at first he could not figure out why. When he had to wrestle a God-damn piece of glass out of Scout’s hands and talk him down right outside of Medic’s bedroom, convince him no new horror had been committed against him, he wished he hadn’t woken up.

Scout had looked at him with a haggard face and red-rimmed eyes, and then looked down at his bleeding, cut-up hands, and said, “So what happened to leavin’ this to you?”

“I’m—I’m working on it.”

“You’re workin’ on it and meanwhile I’m killin’ myself every other day and—“

“Scout, it’s three in the morning, can we just go back to bed?”

Pyro had not been able to decide if the look Scout gave him then was one of hurt or disgust. But by the time they got back to Scout’s room, he had decided he didn’t care, and that he would rather focus on the things he could fix. Things like Scout’s hands. He’d fucked them up good with the glass, shallow but painful-looking and a lot of them, and he just sat there looking at them when Pyro left to find iodine and bandages. He was still doing that when Pyro got back with both of those things, plus a pocketful of those cookies Engineer hoarded, the ones Scout routinely got wrench-smacked for lightfingering.

Neither of them said anything as Pyro carefully dressed his wounds, winding the gauze a little awkwardly but with great care. And eventually Scout said, “You been watchin’ me do my handwraps?”

“No, but my sister was an amateur boxer. Even got to some event in Australia doing it. I used to help her tape her hands up.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“I think there’s maybe a lot of things about me you don’t know,” Pyro said, pulling the gauze tight. “I don’t talk a lot, remember?”

“Nn,” Scout said, looking his hand over as Pyro let go and started to tend to the other one. “It’s prob’ly more I talk too much, yeah?”

“Well...”

“Tell me ‘bout your sister.”

Pyro glanced up. He found Scout focused on him, still exhausted-looking but intent, already listening very hard. He bit back his smile, grabbed the rest of the gauze, and shook his head lightly. “Well,” he started, “her name’s Eleanor ...”

 

* * *

 

Pyro was not a storyteller; he was made for masks and hoods and hiding from the sun and from attention. Still, it only takes the right subject to bring out the spark that turns any man into a poet. And Pyro’s sister, well, she was something else again.

He wasn’t sure how long he talked, chaining one bizarre life event to the next. His sister needed a book written about her, really. It was between the stories about the junkyard witches and the pet goat that Scout pulled him down to the mattress next to him, with a yawned, “Keep going.” So Pyro did, until his mouth felt dried up and gross and now he was yawning every other minute, and Scout’s hand had teased his curly hair into a dandelion puff.

He didn’t remember much after that; just Scout reaching past him to turn out the lamp, and the sleepy, gentle kiss just before he drifted off.

And for a little while, everything was okay.


	4. knead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #2 - "knead" - by PreludeInZ

“He can’t come.”

Miss Pauling sighed, continued kneading the dough for the bread she’d wanted to get in the oven ten minutes ago. It had stopped being an argument and devolved the way it did when Scout just didn’t want to do something. He’d just started repeating himself, and she couldn’t tell if he was doing it on purpose or not. She was frustrated, but she was taking it out on bread dough.

“He can’t,” Scout said again, stubbornly.

Because you couldn’t take it out on Scout.

“Well, except he _is_ coming. He’ll be here on Friday. And no one’s going to make you talk to him, you can go…well, I don’t know where you can go, but you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. And you know that. It’s been two years since we’ve seen anyone from the Badlands. They were my friends, too. I’ve been looking forward to it. Scout, it’s just Heavy.” She said it as gently as she could, but some of the frustration still seeped through.

He was making lasagna, hogging the stovetop. Apparently it needed more than one kind of sauce. Apparently one of these sauces needed to be stirred constantly. Pauling suspected that wasn’t actually true. She couldn’t cook, not like Scout could, but she knew her way around the kitchen well enough to know that a lot of what he did was just compulsive, repetitive action. He wasn’t good at waiting, he hated to hold still. She folded her bread dough into a pan. Slashed the top with a knife. Scout kept the knives in the kitchen wickedly sharp.

“Well, I don’t want him here, but you don’t fuckin’ seem to care what I want. You an’ Pyro.”

Miss Pauling was cool headed, generally speaking, but Scout was pushing it. “There’s more to this arrangement than what you want. This is my house and he’s supposed to be my guest, and if you want, we’ll ask him to leave you alone. I don’t know what we’ll tell him, but we’ll work something out. Scout, whatever you need, you know that. But you said want. And there is a difference. Tell me you know that.”

“I know that. An’, but I also know that it’s my house, too.” That scraping of the wooden spoon on the bottom of the pot, rhythmic, necessary. A little bit defiant.  “…ain’t it?”

Scout wouldn’t go home to Boston. They had a post office box, in town. Scout got letters from the east coast, but he didn’t read them. Kept them, unopened. Miss Pauling and Pyro debated fiercely, behind his back, whether he wouldn’t go or couldn’t go. It was Miss Pauling’s opinion that it was a choice and that Scout had reasons, and that they should be respected, whatever they were. It was Pyro’s opinion that Scout wouldn’t ever choose to be away from his family, if he could help it. They couldn’t come to an agreement and neither of them wanted to talk to him about it. So, in the interim, this was his house, and they were his family.

“Scout, of course it’s your house. But you didn’t buy it, and I didn’t build it, and Pyro’s the one who’s picking out curtains and making it a home. We’re all in this together.”

Now he wouldn’t answer.

She put a hand on his hip, nudged him away from front of the stove so she could put the bread in the oven. Started to feel guilty. “I made up the guest room, but if you don’t want him…god, I don’t know, do you not want him in the house at all? He’d sleep in the barn if I asked him to, and I just know that about Heavy, but it really wouldn’t sit right with me.”

Scout had lost access to his spoon and simmering pot on the stove. Without anything in hand, he just wrung his fingers and looked lost, ashamed. “He c’n come in the house. I’ll sleep in the barn. I just… I get… fuck. C’mon. Y’know how I get. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

It was a little bit heartbreaking that he thought anyone didn’t already, or wouldn’t within five minutes of meeting him. She took his hand, squeezed his fingers. They would work something out. “You don’t have to sleep in the barn.”


	5. paint by numbers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #4 - "paint by numbers" - by PreludeInZ.

“You ‘n Pyro both went to art school an’ I did not, an’ he’s maybe better n’ me, but I am sure as hell a lot better n’ you, Miss Pauling.”

There’d been those familiar, irregular footsteps behind her, then the squeak of the hinges of the screen door. It was almost time for the late summer sunset, and she’d been trying to paint the barn for the past two hours. It was a hobby. It was relaxing. Pyro had oils and charcoal and Scout had ink and henna, and she’d thought she could pick up watercolors. The problem was, they both made it look effortless. It was really, really not effortless. “Shut up. I’m learning.”

“Yeah, an’ there’s a hell of a curve to it if y’aint burdened with what’s considered natural god-given talent..”

Miss Pauling didn’t turn around. “I can hear you smirking, Scout, I swear to god. Neither of you can balance a checkbook, you have no idea what we pay in property taxes, and I’m the one who shops for groceries, you don’t get to give me shit about this.”

“Sure, sure. Okay.” There was a hiss of carbonation as he popped open a can of beer, and a creak of wood as he sat down on the steps. “I grabbed a couple beers, didja want one? Cuz actually I was gonna have both, ‘cept it seems rude now.”

“I have a glass of wine, but thank you.”

He was laughing at her before he’d even said anything. “I think this maybe is the kinda thing you really oughta be doin’ sober. Or maybe lots drunker, ain’t decided.”

It was really unfortunate about Scout that he was funniest when he was being mean. She had to smother a giggle in spite of herself, and force her voice to be stern, because she was a little tipsy and he had a good point.  “Shut up. You haven’t even got a good look at it from there, stop being an ass. It’s not that bad.”

Scout limped down the steps and came to sit on the ground beside her, where she was sitting cross legged with her paints open on a little stool next to her glass of wine and her mug of paint water. Pyro had lent her his smallest easel. It was adorable and her level of skill didn’t merit the use of it. Also a book that the library wasn’t getting back, because it had cobalt blue on it now. She had dipped her brush in her burgundy twice now. Not the paint, but the wine. She hoped the colours she’d chosen weren’t any of the really poisonous ones. Scout was peering over her shoulder at what she had so far, and she was already blushing, flushed from the wine and self-consciousness.

He stared critically for a few moments, then pronounced. “No. Nah. It’s just worse from this angle. Double worse, ‘cause I can see what you’re lookin’ at an you ain’t even in the same ballpark. Honest to god, honey, you maybe oughta try…I dunno. Have y’thought about paint-by-numbers?”

“You are a terrible friend.”

Scout dropped an arm around her shoulders, casually kissed her cheek. “Maybe. Except also I’m an amazin’ friggin’ lay though, right?”

“Fuck off. That’s not even relevant.” Pauling sighed, put her palette down. “I only went to art school for a month, you know. I didn’t belong there at all.”

“Goddamn hippy types, hey? C’mon, though, you’re pretty pretentious.”

Pauling gave up, lowered her glasses on her nose, just enough to make her voice slightly nasal. She peered over the frames at the damp (too damp, practically sodden through, because apparently the water was actually less important than the colours), playing along. “Oh, mmhmm, yes, clearly the artist’s blue period. That splash of burgundy on the right there, where she fucked up those trees and made them look like green sheep, that is obviously a reference to her father’s crippling alcoholism and also the decline of the textile industry.”

She kept going. Scout was gasping and in tears before she ran out of bullshit, and lay back on the ground beside him. “I haven’t even told you the name of it yet.”

He was a long time getting his breath back. “Oh man. Oh my god. You gotta do that again, I gotta go get Pyro, holy christ.”

Pauling giggled. “It’s funny you should say. I thought you might be looking for him, he’s been in there for hours. I was going to call it ‘Pyro in the Barn’. What do you think? Too much?”

Scout’s expression froze, a kind of pantomime grin. And then, frightened, under his breath. “Oh, Jesus.” He sat up, looked past Pauling’s picture. There was a thin, almost imperceptible curl of smoke rising from the roof of the barn. “Shit. Oh, fuck. No.” Then getting a little unsteadily to his feet, and then sternly, in the tone he had that brooked no argument. “Stay here.”

She froze, halfway to her knees herself. There was only really one situation in which Scout ever sounded stern any more. “…be careful,” was all she could manage, but he was already halfway down the hill, and she couldn’t quite manage to get her voice above a whisper.


	6. together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Miss Pauling had never planned on having children. Miss Pauling had actively taken steps to avoid having children. Children were terrible. They were loud and constantly dirty and they didn’t do what they were told. She would never quite understand how she’d ended up with the pair of them."
> 
> #4 - "together" - by Pemm.

Pyro’s chair shot backwards as he leapt to his feet, toppling to the floor with a terrific bang. Pyro had begun shouting, screaming even, directly at Miss Pauling. Pyro looked as if he would vault the table to get at her.

Next to him, Scout was up now, too, talking in rapid, low words, his left hand wrapped tight around his teammate’s upper arm. Pyro twisted away and kept yelling. “—don’t fucking touch me I fucking told you, did you hear a goddamn word of anything I said—“

“—look, look, Pyro, buddy, I’m askin’ you to just sit down, okay, you don’t gotta raise your voice none—“

“Don’t fucking tell me what to fucking do!”

“I’m not,” Scout said, and as he’d been speaking he had been edging around the back of Pyro’s seat to put himself between Pyro and Miss Pauling. “I’m askin’, okay, that’s all I’m doin’, I’m askin’ you to sit down and I’m gonna take Miss Pauling outside and then I’m gonna come back an’ we can talk about it after that.”

He had literally been doing all of that as he spoke, rather forcibly urging Miss Pauling out of her seat and herding her to the door. Pyro was still screeching when Scout shoved her outside. “—absolute idiot, talking about my sister like that, the goddamn cunt—“

The door shut.

For a few seconds Miss Pauling stood perfectly still, hugging her clipboard to her chest as she tried to process what had just happened. What on  _earth_  she had said to launch the sweet Pyro she knew into … that. All she had done was ask about his sister. That was all she had done, right?

With a deep breath she crossed the hall to sink back against the far wall, watching the door. The yelling went on another three or four minutes, and once there was a huge bang that made her jump rather badly—it sounded like the table had been overturned or a chair thrown. Jesus, should Scout be alone in there with him?

She checked her watch. Another long minute passed, and the shouting faded enough that she could no longer hear it through the door. Twenty more seconds and the knob twisted, and Scout slipped out, pulling it shut behind him. Miss Pauling straightened up a little almost exactly at the same moment he slouched back. He pulled a hand down his face. “I am so sorry.”

“It’s—I mean, I clearly said something—“

“No, y’didn’t,” Scout said, shaking his head. “Seriously. It’s all him, you didn’t do nothin’ wrong. Um. He just, he’ll cool down in a couple minutes and then he’ll come and apologize his ass off. I am real sorry about that, I shoulda warned you. He just—it’s just somethin’ that happens with him. Somethin’ in his brain, he don’t mean it, really, I’ve seen him do it over frickin’ birds singin’ too early in the morning, he’s gonna be kickin’ himself all day for goin’ off on you when it’s over.”

The way he said it was tired. The way he held himself was tired. Everything about him screamed  _tired_. “It’s okay,” Miss Pauling said cautiously. “Do you need to sit down? You look worn out.”

“Who, me, what, nah,” Scout said, perking up instantly. Miss Pauling would have sworn she could see him smothering his own exhaustion. “Nah, nah nah I’m, I’m good.”

They stood in uncomfortable silence for a full minute. It was made worse when Miss Pauling realized she had never heard Scout stay quiet for so long.

It soon became too much. “So!” she started, forcing a smile and pushing up off the wall to step a bit closer. It was hard to keep a cheerful attitude in here, she decided—the hall was made entirely out of cement, and dusty old crates lined the walls, and they were underground and the lights in the low ceiling were old and flickered painfully and set everything sickly. TFI had really questionable interview location standards. “I … guess we’ll leave Pyro for when he’s feeling better?”

“Yeah, uh, yeah.”

“What about you? Any ideas?”

“Me?” he said, blinking like he’d just stepped into the sun, like he’d been blinded. “I uh. I guess not. I dunno. I was thinkin’ maybe we’d go out to California or something I guess, me an’ Pyro, like San Francisco, I like it there, but he can’t really—his skin burns real easy, it ain’t good for him, so we can’t really do somewhere like Cali.”

“Oh—I didn’t realize you were planning on staying together.” Scout nodded. “Alright,” Miss Pauling said, shifting her weight as she looked down at her clipboard, shuffled through it until she found Scout’s file. “What about another mercenary job?”

“No,” he said, instantly. “I mean—this’s the only place in the world’s got respawn, right? I don’t feel like dyin’ for real yet. You got any … I dunno, anythin’ in art? Pyro paints, he’s real good at it.”

Doubtful. “I can check. What about you?” Miss Pauling stopped for an instant as a thought came to her. “Oh—you know, actually, I think I might know someone who works for a big shot in baseball. I could refer you to him, we still have a record of your four-minute…“

The sheer grimace that had come over Scout’s face gave her pause. His eyes were darting all over the place, like he was looking for an escape. “I don’t … I guess I ain’t into baseball so much anymore, is the thing.”

This went on. Miss Pauling would pitch ideas, Scout would shrug or shake his head and sink down the door a little further. And then the ideas ran out. “I guess that’s all I’ve got,” she said eventually, chewing her bottom lip, glancing up at him. He said nothing.

He looked so tired _._

Maybe she needed a different approach. “Well, I can keep looking,” she tried again. “You could just sort of … hang out, in the mean time, go see your family or something? Are they still back in Boston?”

“They’re … yeah.”

“I think it said in here you—oh, wow, you didn’t use any of your vacation time, did you? Heck, Scout, go home and make sure your mother knows you’re in one piece.”

She’d said it lightly, teasing, half-expecting to be brushed off again. She was not expecting Scout to go near-boneless against the door and cover his face with one hand, thumb and forefinger pressing hard against his eyes. The bill of his cap shaded his face enough that she couldn’t make out his expression, but she didn’t need to when his shoulders started to shake.

“…Scout?” she said. Hell. Hell, dammit, crap, never mind Pyro, she really had said the wrong thing this time. Scout’s mother was still alive, right? Maybe TFI’s info was out of date. Oh, God, she’d just put her foot in her mouth something awful either way. “Scout?” she said again, putting her clipboard down onto one of the nearby crates and stepping a little bit closer to him. “I … I’m sorry, what did I say?”

Her voice seemed to jar him. He glanced at her over his hand for half a second (eyes rimmed red, growing puffy), and then pulled his hat further down over his face as he struggled to straighten back up. Wait. Struggled? Was he favoring one leg? She’d thought she’d noticed a limp when they’d come down the stairs but brushed it off as her imagination.

It occurred to her that maybe she didn’t really know much about Scout anymore.

She had made a list of the things he was early on in his employment—loud, kind of a jackass, cute, seemed nice enough and had a body that looked like it would never quit—and filed it away in her head and that had been her point of reference for six years. And there was the problem—a lot could change in six years.

Re-inventory, heading: Scout. Quiet. Wouldn’t make eye contact. Had a thousand-yard stare. Had a limp, and as she looked a little closer had what nearly looked like track marks on the insides of his elbows. Had circles under his eyes the like of which she could only remember seeing on her grandfather near the end of his life, when sleep had become nearly impossible. No longer interested in baseball, or flirting with her, or … anything, possibly. Had a definite catch in his voice when he said, “Sor—sorry, I—I just—shit…”

“No, no no no, it’s okay.” Without thinking she reached out and touched his arm. He looked startled as she did, but did not flinch away … no, he actually, sort of, stumbled forward and latched onto her shoulder.

Miss Pauling was not entirely sure how, after that, she wound up with a mercenary openly weeping against her, one who no longer seemed like a mercenary but much more like a shell-shocked survivor. But that was what happened. She managed an awkward pat on the back, feeling somehow guilty, and was startled when nearly of its own volition her hand slid up his spine, across his neck, found the hair that stuck out from under his now-askew cap. “It’s okay,” she repeated, lie or not, because what the hell else was she supposed to say?

It had been a long time since she’d had any crying spats of her own, since college, probably, or the night she had killed someone for the first time. Yes, definitely that one, or a night near in time to it. She had gone home and sat in the shower and cried in an entirely different way from how Scout was crying now, one of shock and disbelief. The tears soaking her shirt at the moment were quieter, sort of, and the way he shed them—with long, slow, shuddering breaths—made her think he had been waiting to do so for an impossibly long time. Her heart stirred painfully. Maybe that was what possessed her to turn her face, just a little, and gently kiss his temple.

Miss Pauling felt his fingers tighten where they were tangled in her shirt sleeve. He grit his teeth and sobbed.

And oh, thank God, the door behind him opened.

Pyro, still vividly red in the face—albinism would do that, Miss Pauling supposed—blinked at them. His expression contorted an instant later, and without hesitation he stepped forward. He dragged the backs of his knuckles up Scout’s ribs and spoke to him in a low voice, much the same way Scout had done to him not ten minutes earlier, like he was trying not to spook him. Scout jerked his head up immediately, nearly throwing Miss Pauling off balance. “P—Pyro—“

“Shh,” Pyro said, “shh, c’mon. C’mere.” And to Miss Pauling’s surprise Scout obeyed, immediately, leaving her to lean into Pyro’s open arms. Suddenly a third wheel, she sort of smoothed her shirt out, and stepped backwards to give them some space. Something told her she should not be seeing any of this. The feeling was reaffirmed when Pyro gave her a sideways, nervous sort of look, then sighed and sort of turned himself and his charge halfway away.

And then—ah.

Pyro turned his head and kissed Scout on the temple, too, the one Miss Pauling had not. And he did it twice, three times, and tugged Scout’s hat off and slid his fingers through his hair as he held him close. Miss Pauling watched, stupefied, until she realized she was beginning to feel like a voyeur. She turned away to hunt for her clipboard, a hundred new questions bursting into her head as she tried not to listen to Scout crying.

This meeting was going to be longer than she’d anticipated.


	7. that leg of yours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #5 - "that leg of yours" - by Pemm.
> 
> Directly follows [#3 - "paint by numbers."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968313)

When they were still working for RED, a few months after everything had really gone to hell for them, Pyro had made Scout promise he would not come after him in the woods again. He was furious when he came back to himself enough to remember that was how Scout had found him just before things went wrong. “I don’t go into the woods when I’ve got my shit together,” he had said. “I swear to God, Scout. If you think I’m out there about to burn something then you just let me do it.”

Scout had protested. “But—what if—”

“What if nothing,” Pyro groaned. “Worst-case scenario is I burn down a forest and maybe I have to respawn. The point is I’m not myself when I do that, I don’t know what I might do. I don’t even know if I’d recognize you.”

“So what?”

“ _So_  you come after me and then the team is down two instead of just one, and—”

“Or I could come and goddamn find you before anything happens—”

“Or more likely you trip with that shit leg of yours and break something and then you die a slow, agonizing death while the forest burns down!”

What Pyro had been trying to get across was that Scout was in enough pain all the time already, that he didn’t want him to get hurt further. He hadn’t meant to say the last thing he did, the thing that made Scout look at him as though Pyro had stabbed him.

Maybe he had.

 

* * *

 

Pyro did not notice the barn door being flung open. He did not hear Scout yelling over the flames, the ones currently climbing higher and higher, the ones sending huge plumes of smoke into the air, trapped by the closed windows. He was not aware of anything, really, anything that wasn’t the fire roaring before him.

Hideous coughing, somewhere, distantly. Pyro wasn’t coughing. Pyro had his mask on, he’d been in one of his moods where he couldn’t handle anyone looking him in the eyes for a few days now. That had its issues, such as neither Scout nor Miss Pauling being able to tell when he slipped into another, more dangerous mood, one they could usually spot and manage.

Not this time. This time Pyro had taken half the firewood from the side of the house and most of the spare gasoline, and built a jewel of a bonfire in the barn, because it had been windy for a few days. The barn kept the wind out. And so Pyro had built the bonfire and threw some matches onto it and climbed up to the hayloft to watch, and nothing else was worth his time.

 

* * *

 

Just dimly, in the hayloft in back of the barn (and it wasn’t a terribly large barn), Scout could see a tiny dark figure sitting cross-legged, chin in hands, a black something swallowing their face. He’d seen that exact silhouette hundreds of times, always staring at one thing.

Of course the blaze would be between Pyro and the door. Of  _course._

Normally the barn was relatively picked-up. Naturally, now that Scout needed to navigate it, there was shit all over the floor—pieces from dismantled, scavenged machines, some woodworking projects, the windows Scout had been stripping paint off of. That was just to start. He cussed viciously and tried again: “ _Pyro!_ ”

Nothing. Scout wiped at the smoke-induced tears already smudging his vision, drew the collar of his shirt over his nose, and moved.

It was hard. The fire was for now contained in a circle in the middle of the barn, but it was viciously hot and every fiber of Scout’s being screamed at him to get away. Above it he could see the low roof starting to smoke. Fuck, fuck,  _fuck_.

Between his short-sleeved shirt and how close to the hayloft the fire was, Scout was already slick with sweat and certain he’d gotten at least a first-degree burn by the time he mounted the ladder. Fuck this ladder, it was unsteady and made of wood and Miss Pauling had always been worried it would break one day. They’d been meaning to replace it for half a year, but never got around to it because they didn’t use the hayloft for anything, not even storage.

Scout grit his teeth and climbed.

He’d forgotten why he didn’t climb ladders. As soon as he put his full weight on his bad leg, on the second rung, he lurched sideways with a panicked yelp. He swore and tried again, going slower, putting both feet on one rung before moving to the next. All his weight wound up on his hands. Well, hand, he was still having to hold his shirt over his nose and mouth with the other. He was going to have splinters from hell. Assuming he survived.

But he did it: he made it to the top, and sure enough there was Pyro, the same as he’d been the whole time. Scout scrambled up onto the hayloft and shook him. “ _Pyro!_  Snap  _out of it_  you  _stupid fuck_ —”

Pyro pulled away, growling. Great, if he was in one of his nonverbal moods again this was going to be even worse. Scout glanced back at the fire, grimaced, and grabbed Pyro by the mask.

He snarled this time, clawing at him and yelling, but Scout had done this enough times that he knew all the tricks to it. He pulled the mask off and flung it aside. Pyro had to snap out of it. Scout didn’t know what to do if he didn’t. “Pyro, c’mon, we have to go, we gotta get down from here!”

“Why?”

Fuck. “Because—because we ain’t gonna be able to see the whole thing burnin’ from the inside, remember?” he tried, starting to pull Pyro toward the ladder. God, this was going to be hard. “We gotta get outta here, we have to go meet Miss Pauling, okay?”

Pyro frowned at him, and then started coughing in big, hideous bursts. Oh, fuck. Where was the fucking mask? There, just out of reach, near the back of the hayloft. Scout shoved himself toward it, grabbed it, and pushed it into Pyro’s hands. “Put that back on,” he said, and then he broke down coughing, too. Fuck. There was so much smoke. He couldn’t see straight, his head was starting to pound, it was so hard to breathe. He didn’t notice the hayloft creak and shift dangerously under him as he shifted his weight.

Pyro, at least, got the mask back own, and had gone back to staring at him. He didn’t say anything when Scout yelled at him again, fuck, Scout could just kill something. No he couldn’t, he was too dizzy. He couldn’t think. He tried to crawl back from where the mask has been, and yelped as he put his weight on his bad leg the wrong way. In a sharp, jerky motion he shifted sideways—

Mutely, Pyro watched when the rotting wood gave way under Scout.

 

* * *

 

Something was wrong. The thing that had been yelling at him was gone, had disappeared through the floor. Pyro contemplated this as he adjusted his mask. Most things didn’t do that. He felt like he should figure out why it had. It seemed important.

The hayloft shifted dangerously as Pyro got to his feet and crossed to the ladder. He got down quickly enough and looked around. Under the hayloft there wasn’t very much, mostly bare floor, some old tools, a stack of molding hay bales. It was on this last that the thing from the hayloft lay now, very still.

Pyro approached it, something digging at the back of his mind. He stared at it for a long time.

 

* * *

 

It had been too long. The smoke was getting thicker and blacker as it crawled up out of the barn, and Miss Pauling was going to drive herself insane if she stayed put any longer. She picked herself up and ran.

The barn door stood open, smoke still pouring out of it. Here Miss Pauling stopped, trying to catch her breath. “Scout?” she called, as if anything she said could be heard over the roar of the fire.

God. God  _damn_  it, if they got out of this alive Scout was going to kill her for not staying away from the barn. Miss Pauling pulled off her sweater and pressed it against her nose and mouth before stepping inside.

As soon as she did, two things happened. One: the far edge of the roof caved in with a terrible crash. She froze in fear, only to have her eye drawn to the opposite side of the barn, where something else was moving—something with a heavy-looking bundle in its arms.

 

* * *

 

“I’m a complete idiot.”

“Pyro, no.”

“I’m a complete fucking idiot and you should have me locked up,” mumbled the first voice. The second one sighed. Scout thought about opening his eyes. His head hurt, his throat, his chest. He tried breathing in and starting hacking instead. “Oh, shit,” said the first voice, and a moment later something warm and soft was touching his arm. When Scout opened his eyes a few seconds later, the first thing he saw was Pyro. He was grimacing, chewing his lip. “You awake?”

Ugh. He remembered now. The fire, Pyro, falling. “No, fuck off.”

“Thank God,” Pyro exhaled, reaching down to stroke Scout’s face.


	8. muscle shirts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #6 - "muscle shirts" - by Pemm.
> 
> Special thanks to [Tea](http://teafortteu.tumblr.com/) for the idea!

**RED BASE - 197X**

 

* * *

 

 

Pyro was in the room when he did it, a year or two later. It was something he vividly remembered, even though it wasn’t much at all, because in his mind that was the day that really marked Scout’s breaking.

It was a quiet act. It wasn’t anything dramatic or loud or attention-grabbing, the way he used to do things. Scout had just pulled out the collection of company-issue shirts he had, all identical red things with his class symbol emblazoned on the arm, laid them in his lap, and sat there cutting the sleeves off with a pair of scissors. From where he sat doodling on the bed, Pyro watched in silence for a time. Finally he asked, “What’re you doing?”

Scout paused, glancing over his shoulder. He cracked a faint grin. “Makin’ muscle shirts, what’s it look like?”

They both knew that was a lie. Pyro had been there that night a few weeks ago. Scout, angry and drunk and in growing pain as the anesthetic from Medic’s last procedure wore off, had pulled off his shirt and kept staring at the winged shoe that designated who he was on the team. His function, his job. All he was fucking good for, he’d said, and pulled away when Pyro tried to comfort him.

Scout went back to carefully cutting the shirts. When he was done the pile of sleeves and stray threads sat on the floor, and he and Pyro had taken them outside and burned them.

 

* * *

 

The mission ended. Scout and Pyro went back to the apartment they had leased a few miles away from where most of the bases were. When they came back for the next mission two weeks later, all of Scout’s shirts had been replaced with new, undamaged ones.

Scout had looked at them, wet his lips, and gone to find the scissors again.

This went on for three months. He wouldn’t talk to Pyro about it, not after that first night, just gather up the sleeves every new mission and hand them over as fuel.

The fifth time the new shirts had appeared, though, there had been a note pinned to one of them.

_A degree of wear and tear to the uniform is expected, but we have determined that the damage incurred by the shirts is willful. Per your contract, defacing company property will not be tolerated. Failure to comply will result in punitive measures._

Before Pyro could stop him he had ripped one of the lighters out of Pyro’s luggage and lit the whole set of clothes on fire.

Between their yelling and the black smell of burned cotton that hung about the room for hours, neither of them got any sleep that night.

 

* * *

 

It got worse, of course it got worse. Everything only ever got worse for them, Pyro had decided a while ago. Scout started destroying not only his own sleeves, but the ones the BLU scout wore. He started disregarding the uniform entirely. When Miss Pauling came to try and figure out what was wrong Scout had refused to speak to her, and Pyro was left to try and explain. That turned out to be for the better. Pyro managed to convince her that the symbol reminded Scout too much of something that had happened to him when he was younger, something Pyro wasn’t at liberty to talk about, and couldn’t RED be persuaded to alter the uniform? Wouldn’t that be the most effective thing to do?

Miss Pauling said she would look into it, and said she hoped Scout would feel better soon. Pyro had plastered on his smile and said, “Oh, I’m sure he will.” He had little hope for this venture. RED wasn’t exactly an understanding sort of workplace.

But at the start of the next mission, when Scout pulled open the chest of drawers and yanked out one of the shirts, the sleeves—and the golden emblem—were gone.


	9. furious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #7 - "furious" - by PreludeInZ.

Pyro had been splitting wood behind the barn. He liked splitting wood, it was relaxing. He was having a good day. The sun was down behind the trees, and the sky was darkening with clouds anyway. They’d have a fire and toast marshmallows and break out a bottle of rum. Miss Pauling was baking cookies.

Scout had ruined it, falling off the top of the barn. Pyro had heard him, not seen him, and the sound had been awful but the sight of him had been worse, because it brought back a flood of really vivid, unbearable memories. He’d been afraid even to touch him. His instincts were all wrong. Pyro couldn’t help that his first instinct when Scout’s eyes flickered open was to close his hands around his throat and kill him properly. That was just an old habit. His axe was still near to hand, too. Oh god, and it just looked too perfect. Pyro had really better just not touch him. He’d better go get Miss Pauling. “H-hey. Just…h-hold…no, fuck. Just. I’ll go get…”

Scout’s first instinct was (he thought) more sensible, grabbing a handful of Pyro’s long-sleeved shirt and managing, “Hhh. Fuck. Fuckin’.  _Hide._ D- _don’t_ tell Miss Pauling.”

Well, no. Of course not. Pyro wasn’t going to be able to tell Miss Pauling anything.

* * *

 

She was angry at Scout for trying to hide from her. She was furious with Pyro for helping him. And why did they even have a fucking barn.

They had gotten away with it for a day. A day was being generous. They had gotten away with it for eight hours, from late in the afternoon, when Pauling had noticed that Scout wasn’t up on top of the barn anymore—that Pyro wasn’t splitting wood out back, either. That wasn’t that strange. Occasionally the pair of them went rambling off through the woods, just being boys. Banging rocks together, eating bugs, making fires. Ridiculously loud sex. Boy things. She didn’t really know. Things friends did. That was fine. She had a bubble bath and a glass of champagne, and she went to bed early.

Hours later, she’d gone to get a glass of water, poked her head in their bedroom door, only sort of on the prowl for something more interesting than water. Neither of them had been in bed, and of course she had to go looking.

Of course she’d found them. Pyro had blinked owlishly at her, and Scout had just whimpered faintly. Pauling had put together what had happened a lot quicker than either of them had anticipated.

It was midnight when she’d caught Scout and Pyro, in that stupid goddamn barn.

Miss Pauling did not like the barn. Miss Pauling did not like heights. But she’d bought tarpaper, and the roof of the barn needed to be reshingled, and she’d been the one who’d sent Scout up there in the first place. She should have just done it herself. This was absolutely her fault.

The last time she’d caught them at something in the barn, she had watched for a few minutes, grinned wickedly, and butted her way in. But the barn was full of dust and hay and she’d had a massive asthma attack in the middle of everything and badly startled Pyro and scared Scout into near hysterics. Last time there had been a communication breakdown between the three of them, she’d ruined things.

She was butting her way in now, grim, green-eyed and just barely restraining her own endlessly rising frustration with the pair of them. Shepard’s tones, but  _angry_. Pyro got to get angry. Scout got to be a wretch. Fuck them both, this was  _her place_ and the whole thing had been  _her idea_ and they were  _her boys_ and she got to be in  _charge_.

Bone infection. Sepsis. Nerve damage.  _Eight hours_. He was going to lose the fucking arm. Never mind that he was glassy-eyed with pain and and probably concussed and god only knew what else he’d broken,  _falling off the top of the stupid goddamn barn. Scout. Just. Jesus_.

He’d barely stirred when she’d come in the door, beaming a flashlight around, until she’d spotted the pair of them.

On their own they were bad enough. Together they were impossible to look after. They got tangled up and tripped over themselves trying to take care of one another. They were  _terrible_  at it.

Pyro was just holding him, protectively, like he hadn’t know what else to do. Clearly he hadn’t known what else to do. Clearly the first thing he  _should_ have done was run and get her. Or just gotten the truck, taken Scout to the hospital himself, if it was that bad.  _Obviously it was that bad_. Pyro didn’t seem to be able to talk to her. Just fucking fantastic.

“Off the top off the  _fucking_ barn, of  _course_  your arm is broken.” That much she could tell from where she stood. She was snarling, angrier than either of them had ever seen her. Pyro was mute, Scout was only semi-conscious and she was in a towering fit of rage. “This is not a do it yourself fix, Pyro, and I  _know_ you know that. Do you even have any idea how to make a splint, in the first place? God. What if he’d gone into shock. You don’t fucking respawn out here, you  _idiots._ Fucking white coat syndrome or not, I do not give a shit, what you are doing is  _actively_ fucking dangerous, and I can’t even believe you’d help him do this.” Pauling had the keys to her truck clenched in her fist, digging red into her palm. “You’re going to help me get him to the truck, or you’re going to get the fuck out of my way.”

Pyro said nothing. Scout could get a few words out, though. Measured, deliberate. At the cost of a massive amount of effort. “I’m okay. Mm. Miss Pauling. It’s fine. No Medic.”

Miss Pauling crossed the dusty floor of the barn, holding her breath. There was something about the way his voice sounded. “Oh my god did he get you  _drunk_. Pyro. Oh my god.”

When Pyro managed to answer, it was like he was speaking around a mouthful of marbles.  “G’way. Fffucking. Notdrunk. Getslike.  _Like_. Thhis. Dn’t touch.”

She edged closer. Scout was the one in danger, but this was what Pyro looked like when he was dangerous. “Let me see him. I need to look. Pyro… _Scout_. Scout, can you hear me? We need to go to the hospital, all right?”

Pyro read Dostoevsky. Pyro had opinions about politics. Pyro was not monosyllabic. “No. Bad. You’re bad. Go. No—hssp.  _Fuck_. Hospital.  _No_.”

Okay. Calm down. This wasn’t going to work. Maybe it was a bad idea to move him too far, anyway. It was warm in the barn. Just because she hated it in here didn’t mean it wasn’t safe. That didn’t mean it  _was_ , of course. It was full of rust and tetanus and rotted wood and mice with hantavirus. And old, old pollen. And ashes. Dust. Those last three were why there was hot, building pressure in her sinuses.

“Okay. No hospital. But, Pyro, this could kill him. I’m not kidding. How long have you been out here? Don’t tell me you’ve been out here all night. Did the bone break the skin? If it’s infected…oh, god. Pyro, come on, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I know you’re really scared. I’m scared too, okay? And Scout. I’m sure we’re all scared. I won’t touch him. Okay? I won’t touch him. Just let me look. Let me get a little closer with the flashlight, let me look.“

Pauling got closer. She looked. She got as close as she dared and she didn’t touch him. Pyro wore long sleeves pretty much at all times for the obvious reasons, but it was the height of summer, and it was hard to convince Scout to keep a shirt on, sunburn or not. Especially if he’d been working up on the roof. He claimed he didn’t burn, only tanned. That was a lie and Pauling had pulled enough blistering skin off his back to prove it. A long, long time ago, Scout with his shirt off on a rooftop had been a hell of a thing to see, as far as Miss Pauling was concerned, and she had known where all of the cameras were pointed. But it was dark, and the light in her hand washed all the colour out of his skin, except where he was freshly bruised from falling. And he was scarred all to hell and she couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He had to be breathing, she’d heard him talk just minutes ago.

Really,  _really_ scared.

“Okay. Someone needs to fix this, Pyro. I need to get…”

Pyro’s face was blank, his teeth were clenched. No wonder he couldn’t get a word out properly. He tightened his grip on Scout. Snarled back at her.

If Scout had been better, Scout would have screamed as Pyro’s fingers clenched deep into his arm. There wasn’t a word for the sound he made instead. It was the last sound he made though. And in spite of everything, Scout still tried to curl up closer against Pyro, sagging against his chest as his blue eyes closed.

_How did they not kill each other, oh god. How did they not get each other killed. Why. Why why in the world would he do this, I won’t hurt him, it’s just_ me _. I’ve never…I haven’t ever hurt either of them. Have I? I never meant to. I just want to help. The pair of them, stupid morons, god damn them both. What else was I supposed to do? If I’d just left them, they’d be dead. I know that. God, why can’t they just trust me. I know I bullied my way into things, and maybe I ruined it, and I know it’s more complicated than I can tell from the outside, but…just…I can’t lose either of them. And if I lose Scout, I know I’ll lose Pyro._

Miss Pauling had always kept a syringe of something on her. What it was varied, depending on the day. Sometimes just air. Sometimes she had worked with people who needed to have embolisms. Generally she didn’t work with them for long.

When she’d learned what the deal was with Pyro, she’d worked up a cocktail of sedatives, appropriate to his body mass. She kept it on hand at all times. There were spares at strategic points around the house. There was one in her nightstand. She hadn’t told Scout about any of them. Miss Pauling hadn’t lasted as long as she had in her line of work by being a complete idiot.

Something about Scout and Pyro made Pauling into a  _bit_ of an idiot, though. Because she pulled the syringe out, displayed it and played her hand open. “Okay. Pyro. You’re hurting him. You’re really going to hurt him and I  _know_ you don’t want to, and you need to stop. So. This is a few hundred milligrams of enough barbiturates to knock you on your ass for six hours. I don’t want to use it on you, I really don’t. I need you to keep Scout safe. I have to go get…not a doctor. Okay, not a doctor. There’s a vet up the road, though. Ten minutes. He’s nice, he’s safe. He owes me a favour. He can keep secrets. If you don’t believe that and after you want me to kill him, I will and I’ll make it look like an accident. Or an embolism or something. And I will be really, really fucking sorry about that, because he’s my friend. But whatever you two need, that’s what I’ve always tried to do. But Pyro, I swear to god. Don’t you hurt him anymore.”

He stared at her. Extended an arm, the one he didn’t have wrapped around Scout. “Gifve.”

Okay well she had been bluffing. She needed Pyro back, to help move Scout inside. “…Pyro, I don’t want to…”

“Not for me.” His jaw was twitching a little, as it unclenched. He turned his head, clumsily butted a kiss against Scout’s forehead. The words were coming back. “Hurts. He needs… Can’t be awake. Doctors. He’ll panic, make it worse.” Pyro looked up at her, almost back to himself. “He’s going to hate us for this.”

Miss Pauling nodded. Gently pushed Pyro’s hand away, worked her way closer. Stroked Scout’s good arm, found a likely looking spot among a veritable garden of old (she hoped) track marks. “He won’t remember any of this. He needs you. It’s my fault. You can let him hate me.”

Hopefully not forever. Hopefully not for long. She hadn’t wanted to know. But one of these days she was going to need to find out why.

 


	10. vigilance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Guest Chapter from our very dear and wonderful friend, the lovely [teafortteu](http://teafortteu.tumblr.com/)!

Scout was getting better about it, or at least that’s what he told himself. Miss Pauling still watched him like a hawk whenever he went to make his rounds about the house, neurotically checking all the doors, all the windows, anywhere someone could enter. He told her to back off, nicely, or at least he tried. He knew she meant well, but he couldn’t help but feel like when she looked at him that way he stopped being an almost twenty-seven year old man and turned into something resembling a scared teenager.

Noah gave him a different kind of look. He had come to accept his habits, how Scout would stalk the house when the sun went down, how it would take him twenty minutes to come to bed when he and Pauling were already in bed, but Scout still saw the way he watched him. He knew it was concern, but god, did he hate it. He hated being looked at like he was a charity case, he knew he was a goddamn charity case, but not now, no, not now that he was getting better.

He had thought it was best to wait until everyone was in bed - Noah slept like a rock and Miss Pauling was easier to sneak past than she wanted to believe, and once they were sound he could slip out and make sure everything was secure. Not that they ever weren’t, Pauling would remind him, and she was right. Every night there was quiet. They were peaceful and solitary and for as many times as Scout checked under the bed, there were no monsters there.

Maybe he didn’t need to do this after all. He smiled at the thought before continuing his patrol, checking the front door, then the kitchen, then the garage... then he thought he heard something in the kitchen again. There wasn’t, of course, it was just that damn branch that always scratched at the window overlooking the sink. He was ready to go to bed now, but now that he’d checked all the doors it was the perfect time for someone to try the front door again, they would think he’d forgotten, he would never forget... When he reached the front door again it was locked, just like he’d left it. Just like he left it the time before that, and the time before that, and--

“Shit,” he breathed, shaking his head. He counted over the circles he’d made in his head, then again - had he really circled the house that many times? Even he knew he was being excessive, ridiculous even. _Pauling was right, I should just go to bed._ He sighed and rubbed his neck, fatigue finally reaching his shoulders and urging him to lie down. But as he walked down the halls for the fifth-or-fuck-all time that night, the sound of scratching came from the kitchen once more. He knew it had to be the branch, and suddenly he was furiously irritated by its insistence on keeping him going, like the damn thing was trying to keep him awake, and how they should just fucking cut down the damn tree so that branch stopped growing back, and- click.

Footsteps, not his, quiet save for the heavy soles of the boots, he knew how they sounded, they were the same kind Heavy and Soldier used to wear, and Medic.... They were there, tentatively taking each step, feeling out the wood and waiting for any and every creak that would give them away.

The silence was impeded by Scout’s own beating heart, the house alive and pulsing, louder and louder with each step their intruder took. Steps into their house, their home, no one was allowed here, not now, especially not now. Scout grabbed the nearest thing - umbrella, rainy season, wooden handle, metal bits - and crept more slowly, more carefully than their intruder could have hoped for.

Scout already knew the parts of the wood that were weakest beneath his feet, Scout knew the feel of the floor and the vibrations of the house, and Scout knew who was and wasn’t supposed to be there. Before he could turn the corner to the kitchen, the shadow was there, black in all but their eyes, and their teeth as they went to shout, and before they could pull out their knife Scout was crashing down on them, the blunt side of the umbrella hitting their jaw, then their nose, then their temple, and soon everything was bloody and Scout was loud and he couldn’t hear the shouting or feel the knife dug into his leg, and he couldn't make sense of the words coming out of their mouth, his mouth, or why the bastard couldn’t just leave him alone, why he couldn't just be left alone, hadn't he done his time? Hadn't he done his part of the deal? Hadn't he died enough?

Because he had died enough, why shouldn’t they die more, why shouldn't he die more, and when the shouting became too much as Pauling and Noah ran into the hallway they only saw Scout and the remains of a body and a puddle that was once a skull. Scout continued to wail, hit, shout, but soon Noah’s arms were around his and he was shaking now, and he couldn’t hit anymore, and the blood on his face ran down with his tears, and he wanted to stop.

Noah knew what to do with the aftercare. Being mercenaries had taught him a lot about death - watching Scout die had taught him a lot about recovery. Pauling frowned as she looked between them, waved them off. It was better that Noah take care of Scout now, anyways. She knew more about corpse disposal than the both of them.

* * *

 

Miss Pauling was never not going to be afraid of people breaking into her house and killing her, but she'd never needed to walk the halls the way Scout did. And thank god he did, she might have been murdered in her bed. Thank god she shared a bed with two of the most dangerous men she'd ever met, and thank god they both loved her enough to kill for her sake. She was curious who it had been, as she shoveled the last of the dirt over the body she'd dragged out to the woods, patted it neatly and covered it with brambles and brush. There hadn't been enough of a face left for her to be able to tell, and probably they were just a lackey, anyway, some luckless assassin. Someone somewhere was always going to have a reason to want her dead, she'd come to accept that long ago. Just part of the job.

When she got back to the house, Noah hugged her and kissed her. Said he would stay up the rest of the night, he wouldn't sleep anyway. Told her to go upstairs, where Scout was glassy-eyed and silent, horrified with himself. Noah had bandaged up his leg and tucked him away upstairs, nestled in bed with his face buried in the pillows. She'd shrugged out of her clothes, let herself be vulnerable and naked, and crawled into bed next to Scout, insinuated her way into his arms. Thanked him. Promised that she loved him, that she loved his ferocity, his vigilance, his need to protect the people he loved. Cradled his face in her hands and swore she would have done the same for him, and so would Noah.


	11. scout rides middle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #9 - "scout rides middle" - by Pemm.

Miss Pauling was naturally inquisitive. Curious. At least enough that she had taught herself a great deal of the assassination techniques she knew now. But she knew when to stop, too. That part was very important. She’d had coworkers who got too curious about the inner machinations of TF Industries, about what the Gravel Wars might be covering up. Those coworkers were no longer with the company, or among the living.

It was that part she hung onto as she made preparations for her trip to Oregon. Well, their trip. It had taken a week for her to coerce Scout and Pyro into coming with her. “At least until something else turns up,” she’d said. “It’s not like I really know anyone out there. I’d like the company, and I could use the help. I’ve been up to the property, the sun’s nearly never out.”

That might have been the line that bought Pyro. Scout was the one that dragged his heels. Ever since his fit on her shoulder he’d been reluctant to speak with her, clearly embarrassed. This time it was Pyro’s turn to apologize for him. “He’s been under a lot of stress,” he said as they loaded the crates of his and Scout’s belongings into the back of Miss Pauling’s little purple truck. “With the team dissolving, and all. Trying to figure out somewhere we can both go.”

Miss Pauling had said it was fine, even though she felt like there was something much more sinister than stress from wherever that outburst had come from. But she did not ask about that, or about Pyro’s explosion of fury (which, exactly like Scout had said, he had apologized profusely for), and she certainly had not asked about the way Pyro had comforted his teammate. “Teammate.” There was no team anymore, though there might still be something to the “mate” part of it.

And she still did not ask why when Pyro said, forcefully, “Scout rides middle.”

Scout, however, had protested. “I don’t–Pyro, I ain’t …” His voice had trailed off as his eyes cut to Miss Pauling. “…Yeah, fine.”

The plan in Miss Pauling’s mind had been that she and Scout could switch off driving during the day, and when it got dark Pyro could take over for a while, given he needed to stay out of the sun and the visors in Miss Pauling’s truck had been broken for a year. Scout had gone right on packing things in as she explained this, as if he hadn’t heard. But Pyro had spoken up. “No, that won’t work. It’ll have to be you and me. Scout can’t drive.”

“Oh.” She would have sworn she’d seen him driving in. More than once, even. “Shoot. I just assumed–”

“I know how to drive,” Scout had said loudly, a few yards away.

An awkward silence. In the half-darkness of dawn, Miss Pauling could see Pyro give a long, slow exhale and paw at one eye. “He knows how to drive. He doesn’t drive.” Scout muttered something as he limped by them to get more luggage.

Miss Pauling was beginning to wonder what she had gotten herself into.

Her ability to restrain herself continued to serve her as they piled into the car and hit the highway, with Pyro driving first until the sun got too bad. In the first hour alone Miss Pauling had watched Scout continue to act decidedly un-Scout-like. He didn’t chatter, for one thing. She had expected the whole twenty-one hour trip to be nothing but Scout talking. He sat bolt upright the whole time, head rarely moving but his eyes constantly skittering about. Every railroad crossing or pothole was announced long before it became an issue.

Like Soldier, Miss Pauling thought. Once she had ridden with Soldier and Engineer five hours for a specialty mission, and Soldier had done the exact same thing. She had asked Engineer about it, later. “Just sort’a Soldier’s way,” he’d said, chewing his lower lip. “I don’t know how many of them war stories of his are true, but I reckon it’s enough of them that that’d be why. He don’t sleep much, either. Always got to be sure things are safe. Makes a good watchdog, anyway.”

They stopped about four hours in for the bathroom and breakfast. Pancakes, whipped cream, it had been a nice little place. Pyro consumed enough syrup to choke a horse. When they were done, Pyro had headed for the restroom one more time, and Scout elected to follow Miss Pauling outside to the truck rather than wait for him. When they were out there, after an uncomfortable silence had begun to settle on their shoulders, Scout said, “I get blackouts.”

What. “Blackouts?”

“Like, I have a hard time sleepin’ kinda, I don’t get enough really, so sometimes my eyes quit on me or I pass out.” He was focused on picking at some of the paint peeling off the truck, and Miss Pauling was sort of glad because she wasn’t entirely sure what sort of expression she was wearing. He did glance at her, though, for a fraction of a second. “That’s why I don’t drive. Not ’cuz I can’t.”

That was all Miss Pauling got out of him. Pyro stepped out of the restaurant, and they were on the road again. She had the wheel this time, but there wasn’t much on the empty highway that desperately needed her attention. She elected to keep watching the boys. They–or at least Pyro–had apparently decided she wasn’t going to say anything about whatever it was they had between them, and so he had wrapped his hand around Scout’s and for a good portion of the trip they sat like that. It seemed to relax Scout a bit, anyway. Miss Pauling, of course, said nothing. What they were to each other wasn’t really her concern. The little crush she had once had on Scout–the old Scout–could at least be laid to rest now.

They stopped again at around two in the afternoon, at a real dive of a place, but at least they had good chicken wings. This time it was her who was the last to get out to the car. They had parked around the corner of the building. Pyro and Scout stood leaning against the truck, their backs to her. Miss Pauling had not meant to eavesdrop.

“That ain’t it, you know it ain’t that, I’d hold your goddamn hand all the time if I could. Just, how do we fuckin’ know we can trust her. That is all I’m sayin’ here, that’s it, all I want is to be sure.”

“When has Pauling ever given us a reason not to trust her?” Silence. “I don’t think we’d be going with her to Oregon if she cared, Scout, she wouldn’t have asked.”

“Yeah, well, what if she changes her mind halfway there? Kicks us out in the desert, what then? With you an’ the sun? I didn’t wanna do this, I still think it’s a bad goddamn idea–”

Pyro glanced up, and his eyes met Miss Pauling’s instantly. Oh, hell. He looked away just as fast, and broke out into an exaggerated cough. Miss Pauling expected Scout to catch the hint, to look behind him–what he did instead was freeze up, lifting his hands. “–hey. Hey, you okay? You feelin’ alright?”

“I’m fine,” Pyro said, catching one of Scout’s hands, and raised the other over his head as he waved at Miss Pauling. “Hey, took you long enough.”

Scout twisted halfway to look over his shoulder, stared at her for a few seconds, and then let Pyro herd him back into the car.

Pyro took the driver’s seat again, swathed in a massive hoodie that had to be terribly hot, with Scout’s baseball cap on his head and an expensive-looking pair of sunglasses with lenses so large he began to resemble a bug. Scout resumed his stiff-backed sentry duty, and they had been driving for about thirty minutes when Miss Pauling finally made up her mind. And anyway, she was curious. “So, how long have you two been together?”

There was complete silence in the truck. A sharp bump shaking the wheels was the only noise, and as the seconds ticked by Miss Pauling could feel her face begin to heat up. Scout was staring at her from the corner of his eye.

Then Pyro said, “You know what, no one’s ever asked us that before.” He sounded pleased. Really, genuinely pleased. “What’s it been, Scout, five years?”

“Uh … s, somethin’ like that. Five and a half, I guess.” He swallowed. “Yeah.”

“He couldn’t stand me at first,” Pyro went on evenly, warmly. “I sort of had a crush. I kept diving in to save him on the field and he didn’t really like that.”

“‘Cuz I didn’t need savin’,” Scout mumbled. A beat. “Show-off,” he added.

“Well, you’re the one who kept running face-first into rockets,” Pyro said, grinning and slinging his arm over Scout’s shoulder. “Jerk. Been dating a jerk for five and a half years.”

Scout blew a raspberry at him, the first spark of the old Scout that Miss Pauling had seen all day. She couldn’t help smiling at the pair of them. They were cute together, really, and complimented each other besides–Pyro was built more heavily than Scout, Scout was taller. Scout was dark from years in the sun, Pyro nearly porcelain. Brown hair and blond. It maybe didn’t help that if she was honest with herself she found them both very nice to look at.

Things got a little easier after that, or Pauling thought. The atmosphere settled. Scout started talking, a little, though Pyro did most of it. They compared childhoods (Scout didn’t join in on this one), answered her awkwardly worded questions about what being not-straight was like, and eventually began discussing actors, specifically male ones, and specifically which were the prettiest. Pyro liked Travolta; Miss Pauling thought Martin Sheen was quite nice. When Pyro nudged him, Scout muttered something about Al Pacino, and couldn’t stop his grin when Pyro groaned dramatically and said he would never be able to match up to that.

They stopped for dinner at a ramshackle little Chinese place, and the conversation kept going. Scout had to show both of them how to use chopsticks properly and said they were embarrassments, and Pyro stole every fortune cookie left on the table and refused to hand them over. Miss Pauling laughed the entire time, delighted and surprised at how quickly they seemed to have taken to her. She felt like a friend, not their manager.

That said, it did startle her when they got up to get back in the car and Scout straight pitched forward after standing up. Pyro cursed and caught him and fussed. “’M fine, I’m fine,” Scout said after he’d regained his balance, but he let Pyro be his crutch when they headed back outside. Blackouts, Scout had said. She couldn’t catch his eye after that.

The last long fingers of afternoon were starting to fade, and Miss Pauling drove until the sun went down. They stopped for gas and snacks and bottled water, and she and Pyro switched places again, and it wasn’t long after that that she began yawning. There were still a good handful of states between them and Oregon, and Pyro was starting to look worn out, too. It was a warm night, for spring, and Miss Pauling had kind of shifted and nudged until Scout’s arm was sprawled over the back of the seat, closer than maybe necessary to her shoulders; and, okay, maybe that crush wasn’t quite ready to go away.

When they hit Utah, she shrugged out of her jacket and glanced around. It was completely black, but for the stars blazing overhead, and the truck’s little headlights. “Scout, how do you feel about being a pillow?”

“Uh—what? Hey—”

She was already experimenting with different spots on him she could wedge her jacket against. She was nothing if not bold. “It’s just I really need to get some sleep, and I’m not going to get any if I’m leaning on the side of the car.”

He seemed to accept this, and it took a good forty-five minutes, but as time went on Miss Pauling would swear she could feel him relaxing bit by bit. He smelled good. And if his arm drifted down against her shoulders in the dark, well. That was okay. Maybe she could help him, too.

The noise was reduced to the rolling tires and the two boys, talking softly. Miss Pauling listened as they talked about not much of anything until she drifted off, Scout’s scent in her nose and Pyro’s gentle voice in her ears.

 

* * *

 

“She asleep? Miss Pauling? Hey. … damn,” Scout said a few minutes later, peering down at the girl curled against him. “Heck. She’s out.”

Next to him, Pyro smiled. There was nothing but miles of straight highway ahead of them, and so he took one hand off the wheel and squeezed Scout’s knee before taking his hand. “Still think we can’t trust her?”

“Aw, shut up.” Scout shifted in his seat, glancing up at Pyro with more than just a little bit of a smile. “You were right.”

“I’m always right.”

“Fuck off, man,” Scout said, tucking a stray piece of hair behind Miss Pauling’s ear. “Y’know, I used to have a real bad crush on her.”

“Yeah? You’d’ve been cute together.”

“Maybe,” Scout said.


	12. quiet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #10 - "quiet" - by PreludeInZ.
> 
> Directly follows [#9 - "scout rides middle."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968523)

Scout had been really quiet. Once Pyro had fallen asleep, he’d gotten quieter still, quieter than Pauling knew was even possible, as they’d driven straight through the little town, the nearest thing to civilisation within fifty miles of her farmhouse. She was too tired to even remember the name of it. Miss Pauling had grown up in a small town. She didn’t know where Pyro had grown up, but Scout had grown up in Boston. Naturally this was going to be strange for him.

When the car had finally stopped, she leaned back in her seat and sighed, heavily. She felt empty, without the noise of the engine or the gentle vibration or the feeling of movement. Too damn long a drive. Not even the sight of her house—her  _home_ —was enough to make a dent in her weariness. But if she was tired, Scout had to be exhausted.

Scout was just really tired. It was almost like that was the only thing she could be sure about him, now. He’d dropped off once, that she was aware of, shortly after the chinese restaurant. Blackouts, that had been putting it mildly. He’d just sort of slumped over, curled up against Pyro’s shoulder, not even able to be self-conscious in her presence any longer. She had been suddenly relieved in a way that made her realize how much his constant state of alertness had been stressing her out. She hadn’t even known what to say when he jerked awake in a state of mild panic only half an hour later. She really, really hoped he’d slept while she’d been sleeping. She was almost certain he hadn’t.

Scout was really fucked up. Miss Pauling was going to need to work on that.

First, though, there was a little more to be done. She hadn’t planned this far, as far as actually arriving. She certainly hadn’t planned on the two of them being there with her. She had the basics of what she would need to rough it for a few days, stowed up at the house. Once the sun was up properly, she would need to go into town and pick up a few more things, sleeping bags for the boys, toothbrushes. She’d think of the rest later. For now she forced an exhausted smile. “Well, we made it.”

Scout was still really quiet. Quieter without the sound of the engine to drown out everything he wasn’t saying. He only seemed loud when he finally spoke, he still barely had a voice. “It’s really nice.” She didn’t know if it was because he didn’t want to wake Pyro, or from disuse. Or both. Or because of the truth they wouldn’t tell her, the thing she didn’t like to think about.

Pauling smiled, her eyes prickled a bit.  She couldn’t pin down the reason why. “Yes. No, I mean, thank you. But…yeah. No, it really is. I was out here for…um. Business. I stumbled across the place and I just wanted to stay here forever. I, um. I hope you guys like it.”

“Can I go look around? If it’s okay?”

Scout was really timid. That was really just the last thing in the world she’d imagined he would be, when they got here. She drew herself up, stretched as well as she was able, and heaved open the driver’s side door. Smiled, genuinely. “Of course.”

Well, clearly they had been on the road too long, because her legs buckled when they hit the ground and she fell flat on her face. Her truck was wonderful, and she loved it, but if she was honest, bottom of the cab was about a foot too high from the ground for her and her legs were asleep. She laughed at herself, helplessly, her hands were covered with dirt and dew.

“…Miss Pauling?” Scout scrambled out of the cab after her, dropped down beside her. “Oh my god, oh Jesus, are you okay? What happened? Are y’okay, Jesus, Miss Pauling, I…”

“I’m fine, Scout.” She pushed herself up, sighed and yawned. She was almost too tired to notice how frantic he sounded. Maybe that was a kindness. “Just drove a bit too long.”

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean…”

She cut him off before he could snowball into real panic, put a hand on his arm. “Help me up.”

Well, he did, technically. He scooped her up off her feet and she was so startled by the suddenness of the movement that she yelped a little and latched her arms around his neck. “Yikes. Okay. Wow. Okay. Not what I meant! God. You are tall and really strong! Put me down.”

“M’sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

He lowered her to her feet and she gingerly rubbed her legs, pins and needles dissolving. He kept a hand on her shoulder, but something about him seemed far away, distracted by his surroundings. “You’re tired.”

“You’re one to talk,” she retorted, straightening up, then cursing to herself. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…it’s okay. Just. I mean, I didn’t know…shoot.”

Scout shrugged, let go of her shoulder. “It’s fine.”

Miss Pauling bit her lip. “If you wanted…you could just relax in the truck with Pyro. I have some things I can do around here, I need to dig out my keys, get the house unlocked. I’ll be quiet, leave you two alone for a while, I won’t bother you. Scout, I really wish you’d get some rest.”

Now he looked dejected, on top of exhausted. “I can’t. I…I’m really sorry. I just can’t, I can’t. S’really nice of you to say, don’t worry ‘bout me, though. Please. Sorry. I’m sorry. I wish I could, honest. M-maybe later.” He brightened a bit, with an effort. “You could, though. You’re tired. I’m just gonna…I won’t go far. I won’t break anythin’.”

_Christ, Scout. It’s all broken already, you can’t do any harm out here._ “I’m really all right. You shouldn’t be alone.”

Scout was less tall than she thought he was, and he dropped his shoulders further. She could really barely stand it.  “M’sorry you an’ Pyro had to do all the driving. Just…it’d make me feel better. Hate t’see you tired.” He paused for a long few moments. “Pyro…um. He…kinda…he sometimes forgets maybe it’s okay if I’m alone for a bit. I ain’t…not that I didn’t appreciate it. Was a hell of a long drive for me, too, Miss Pauling.”

Pauling was tired. And Scout was really sweet, still, in spite of whatever had happened. And of course he was allowed to need a little time alone. “…Okay. If it would really make you feel better. Just a nap. Just twenty minutes, and you’ll wake me up, okay? Do you have a watch?” He shook his head, and she had already slipped hers off her wrist, pressed it into his hand. “Okay.”

He clung to her fingers for a moment longer than maybe he needed to. Then he just took her hand. He’d dropped his head, like he couldn’t look at her, and his voice was still quiet. Restrained. “Thanks. For this. I know it was just s’posed to be your place, but also…just f-for everything. God. Miss Pauling. You’ve always been nice to me. It always really mattered. More’n I can say. So. Just. Uh. Thank you.”

She took his hand in both of hers, squeezed it. She was going to start crying very soon, but not until she could hide in the cab of the truck, and first she was going stretch up on her toes and kiss him on the cheek. “You’re welcome.”

_You are so welcome here._


	13. accident

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #11 - "accident" - by Pemm.

It was an overcast, chilly sort of day—Pyro’s favorite, and so he was outside in the barn, and Miss Pauling had joined him to see what she could do—when it happened. Less than three weeks after their arrival. Rain threatened on the horizon.

All Miss Pauling had done was ask Pyro if he knew where Scout had put the drill. Not twenty minutes before they’d been chatting easily, comparing what books they’d enjoyed in the last few years. She was not expecting his answer. “How should I know?” he had snapped, waving the tape measure at her. “I’m busy.”

“Um—okay. What about the—”

“Jesus Christ, do I look like a hardware store to you?” Now he turned on her, letting the board he had been holding up with one hand crash to the ground with a heart-stopping bang. “How am I supposed to get fucking anything done if I have to stop every ten seconds to tell you where the hell something is?”

She could see every flash of his teeth, freckles disappearing in the furrows that had appeared in his brow. In truth he was not much taller than her, but he was certainly a good deal bigger and a lot stronger, his whole body corded with muscle from years of carrying oxygen tanks and flamethrowers and sledgehammers at a full run. When he stepped toward her she instinctively stepped backwards. That itself scared her. Miss Pauling was used to being threatened by thugs and tough guys who thought five-foot-one and a hundred and ten pounds of secretary wasn’t a threat to them. Most of those thugs and tough guys were dead, but Pyro was her employee. Moreover she had, very quickly, come to think of him as her friend. “…Okay,” Miss Pauling said, as peaceably as she could. The snarl twisting Pyro’s face looked unnatural on him. She was fairly certain that it was. “I’m sorry for bothering you. I’ll go look myself.”

“Oh, sure, now you’re going to be a martyr about it!”

“What? Pyro, no, I don’t—”

“’ _Pyro, no’_ ,” he mimicked in a high, shrill voice. “My name is fucking  _Noah_ ,  _Miss_  Pauling, did your stupid little clipboards ever tell you that?” He took another step toward her and goddammit he was between her and the door, and there was the tool bench just out of reach but she wasn’t sure if she could beat him to it if she had to sprint there. “Maybe I’m fucking goddamn sick of being Pyro, did that ever cross your mind? You sure never fucking asked me, or Scout, did we give up our names entirely when we signed up for RED? Are we still just dumb fucking mercenaries you send running around wherever you need some goddamn work done? Is that why you brought us here?  _Is it?”_

His voice had been growing in volume as he spoke, and at the end he was outright yelling at her, red in the face, uncomfortably close. Pauling had tried to stop herself from backing up any further, and failed rather miserably. Her heart thumped like a rabbit’s.

Where the hell was Scout? Why had she left her syringes in her bedroom? What was she supposed to do? If he threw the tape measure at her that wouldn’t be so bad, but he could reach the toolbench and the saw and bricks sitting on it if he decided to. Pyro wouldn’t hurt her, would never hurt her, she was sure, but what she wasn’t sure of was if the person yelling at her was really Pyro anymore.

“… I’m sorry,” she said again, in a low, placating voice. “I’m really sorry, Py—Noah. Noah Dockter, right? Whichever name you want, I’m sorry I assumed.”

“I fucking bet you are.”

Fuck. What had Scout done last time? “Look, maybe we should talk about this more later when you feel better–”

He threw the tape measure at her. It went wide—very wide, actually, like he’d missed on purpose, but she still gasped and flinched as it bounced off the dusty floorboards with a terrible crack. “ _Feel better_? Fuck me, Pauling, you’re fucking hilarious aren’t you? Don’t fucking patronize me, I swear to God, I should—”

Out of the corner of her eye Miss Pauling saw something move. Before she could even turn her head to look, something came flying out of nowhere and hit Pyro square in the side of the head. He squawked and cursed and stared down at the ball of twine that had struck him as it rolled away, and Pauling looked to see Scout standing in the barn’s doorway, coming out of a pitcher’s stance and with his face set in a grim stare. “Pyro!” he called, with an air of authority and assertiveness Miss Pauling had not seen in him since this entire adventure started. “Get over here.”

“Now we’re fucking throwing shit at me?” Pyro barked back, turning away from Pauling entirely but making no move to go to him. She could see him digging lines into the palms of his hands with his nails as Scout made his slow way over. “We’re _throwing shit_  at me! I fucking  _waste my life_  on  _you_ and you throw shit at me, you goddamn ungrateful  _cripple_ , you—” He shoved Scout, who scarcely moved, like he’d been expecting it, and in turn Scout grabbed his wrists. “—let go of me I cannot  _BELIEVE_ —”

“Miss Pauling, go on an’ get outta here,” Scout said loudly, ignoring Pyro entirely even as he switched to full-scale screaming. There was already spittle on his cheek from it. “I got him, I got him now, sorry I wasn’t here, get goin’.”

Miss Pauling didn’t even think to answer. She just bolted.

 

* * *

 

An hour passed before she had fully regained her composure. She smoothed her hair out and washed her face and forced down a piece of peanut-butter toast and felt like herself again, but when she went back out to the barn to check on the boys they were not there. They were not at the truck, either, and she hadn’t heard them come into the house. If they were together, fine. Hopefully they hadn’t killed each other. There wasn’t any blood on the barn floor, at least.

It was two more hours and a rainstorm later before she heard the front door swing open. Pauling lifted her head up from her book, hesitated, and then put the book and her tea down to go and see who it was.

Both of them, it turned out, their clothes and hair wet, mud on their faces. Pyro had leaves in his hair and possibly a twig stuck to his beard. Apparently they’d gone out to the woods. They were kicking off their shoes as Miss Pauling came into the hall, and Pyro had started saying something to Scout when he looked up and saw her. Whatever he’d had on his tongue retreated back down his throat. They stared at each other for a few mute seconds, and then he looked back down to his shoes, looking desperately sheepish. Scout glanced at him, and then up at her. She heard him sigh.

Pyro went off into the dining room. He had absolutely no reason to be in the dining room, it didn’t lead anywhere, except that it was the only path of escape between him and Pauling. Scout let him go without saying anything, and met Pauling halfway down the hall. “Hey, Miss Pauling.”

“Hey, Scout. Um. Pyro’s…?”

“Not a freakin’ psychopath no more? Yeah.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, he’s okay now. I know it ain’t much but he feels like dirt about it, he’ll come an’ say sorry to you once he stops bein’ embarrassed. An’ I mean he is real embarrassed so it might be a while, he’d been tryin’ real hard not to do that to you again an’ he was doin’ okay.”

“He—wait, he’s been doing that? What, at you?”

“Yeah, I mean, I know how to deal with ’em, a’course at me.”

She exhaled, followed his gaze into the dining room. All she could see was the curtained window and the edge of the antique table that had already been there when they arrived, one of the only sturdy things about the place initially. “Is this like what happened last time?”

“Last time,” Scout echoed, blinking, “Oh. Oh, oh, yeah, at uh, about his sister? Yeah. Same deal. He really don’t mean it. He probably ain’t even gonna remember everything what happened, he don’t remember I threw the twine at him even.”

It was so disgustingly difficult to not ask why, but Pauling bit her tongue and nodded anyway.

 

* * *

 

She did not see Pyro again until late that evening, after Scout had gone to his and Pyro’s room for the night. She had not expected to see him until the next day, honestly, but as she was coming back from the bathroom from brushing her teeth, there was a white ghost leaning against the wall by her room. The floors in this house creaked; he saw her long before she reached him. “Hey, uh–” Pyro cleared his throat, glanced down at his bare feet. “–hey, Pauling.”

Okay. She could do this. This she could handle. “Hey yourself. Are you feeling alright?”

He looked surprised, and then grimaced. “Um, yeah, yeah I am. So … look. Can I apologize or would you rather I got away from you?”

The way he said it—fidgeting, brow knit, chewing his lip—was terribly endearing. “No, you can say whatever you want,” Pauling said, leaning against the wall next to him. “I mean, I’ll listen.”

He let out a deep breath. “I guess Scout already told you some of it, but I am so sorry. You didn’t do anything to deserve that, nothing at all, that was all … me,” he said with a grimace, tapping the side of his head. “I’m not entirely there sometimes and I just go off at nothing. I’m really sorry if I scared you.”

“A little,” Pauling admitted. They stood in an awkward silence for a moment. She couldn’t stand those. Screw it. “Is it okay if I ask why?”

The way Pyro’s face turned into a blank mask told her no. But he did say, at last, “I got stuck inhaling something I shouldn’t have been once, a lot more than anybody should. Just an accident.”

He could not have been plainer about the fact he was hiding something. Miss Pauling made the mental note that Pyro could not lie to save his life. But “I’m sorry to hear that,” was all she said, as sympathetically as she could, and it was real sympathy, at least. There was something deep and buried here, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to dig it out. “It’s alright, Pyro. Er–Noah? Which one do you want me to call you?”

His expression changed to baffled. “I guess either one’s fine.”

“Do you know if Scout–”

“He wants to stay Scout.”

Okay then. Miss Pauling nodded and smiled and wondered what the hell the deal was. “Alright. Maybe we can talk more about what I should do when that happens in the morning.”

“Yeah, that’s probably smart.”

“We’ll do that, then. Goodnight, Pyro.”

“Goodnight,” he said–and to Miss Pauling’s surprise he reached out and tucked a stray piece of hair that had been hanging in her face behind her ear, and smiled in a weak sort of way. “Sorry again. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she said as he went off down the hall, blinking and touching the place where his knuckles had brushed her skin.


	14. goddamn laundry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #12 - "goddamn laundry" - by Pemm.
> 
> Written from Scout's point of view.

The laundry don’t really need doing but that’s not even the point. The point is it’s goddamn August and the grass is all dried out and the air’s full of dust and the sun’s beating down and I—I can’t be outside. I can’t do it. Not right now.  
  
Pyro gets it. Laundry sort of turned into a codeword some days because God knows I frickin hate doing laundry, it’s boring. But, laundry. Pyro thinks it wound up being laundry on account of it’s doing the same thing over and over and you kinda have to focus on it, but not a whole lot. Distraction. I can do laundry just about no matter what else on me is fucking up that day and I don’t gotta focus on what hurts.  
  
Today my leg hurts.  
  
Usually it doesn’t. The bad one, I mean. That would be some damn garbage if it did, normally it’s just if I stand on it wrong. And I guess maybe hurt ain’t the right word so much as it aches. I look outside and I see all that dust and sun and it’s like the Badlands.  
  
I don’t guess I know so much what to say about the Badlands except I never felt better but when I was there and I was running.  
  
So what I do is I butt in while Pyro and Miss Pauling, who don’t know any of this shit and she won’t ever know, are making attack plans for their yard-saleing or antiquing or something. And all I gotta say is laundry and Pyro looks at me and he knows. ’Course he does. It’s Pyro. Oh, he says, yeah, right, I forgot we were gonna do that. Like we’d planned it, like he don’t know perfectly well I’m dragging him deeper into the house because some days I’m a real chickenshit and I have to go do goddamn laundry so I don’t lose my mind. It ain’t so bad as it was, I mean. We’ve been here maybe three months and I’ve only had to do this about five times. I ain’t gonna say how often I was doin goddamn laundry when we was on RED.  
  
And Pyro goes and he brings Miss Pauling along, who’s looking real confused because why the hell is Scout worried about laundry, and before she can say nothing Pyro starts asking her about that guest room we been working on and if she wants the sheets that been sitting around to go in there. I dunno how other people get by without a Pyro, if I’m bein honest.  
  
So we go do the goddamn laundry, in the cement basement, where it’s all mildew and damp and cold. Pyro says he likes it because he got sunburned the other day and it feels good to him down there and everyone knows it’s bullshit, but I don’t say nothin.  
  
I just fold laundry, and I don’t remember the Badlands, and I don’t remember what running was like.


	15. problems

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #13 - "problems" - by PreludeInZ.
> 
> Directly follows [#10 - "quiet."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968583)

It was only supposed to have been a twenty minute nap. She hadn’t intended to have it on top of Pyro.

She had woken up, sore, in the cab of the truck, parked in the driveway of her tumbledown farmhouse. In retrospect, they really should have made the trip in two parts. She had just felt so awkward about the notion of asking how they wanted to divide up a hotel room, it had seemed easier just to plow straight through.  It had been just dawn when she’d pulled into the driveway, parked. Pyro had remained sleeping, with his head against the window. He snored. That might be a problem.

She shifted carefully. Pyro was a light sleeper, according to Scout. It had been one of her favourite parts of the drive, and she had giggled like a schoolgirl, when the pair of them had started complaining about how the other slept.

Didn’t sleep, in Scout’s case. He hadn’t come to wake her. That was definitely a problem. She had brought a briefcase full of the tools of her particular, morbid trade. She had sedatives, hypnotics, and tranquilizers for days. She would need to dig that briefcase out. She would need to go find him.

Miss Pauling didn’t know what time it was. Pauling hated not to know what time it was. The tarp that had covered their belongings in the back had been thrown over the windows of the cab. By Scout, for Pyro. Obviously.

God, he was a sweetheart. She wouldn’t have thought of that in a million years. When in the world had Scout gotten kind? And he had been with another man—a freckled, porcelain seraph of a man, who had been gorgeous under the gas mask—for almost the entire time she’d known him, and it hadn’t really clicked until she’d woken up with her head on his lover’s chest.

Problems were Miss Pauling’s business. She knew from problems. That was a really, really serious problem.

She climbed quietly out of the cab, ducking under the tarp, blinking in the…well, she had given Scout her watch. It seemed like the sort of sunlight that would indicate it was about ten. It had been dawnish when they had arrived.

Scout had said he wouldn’t go far. Miss Pauling stretched and yawned and really felt much better for having slept. She turned, but stopped dead with a little yelp of horror.

When Pyro chambered out of the car a few minutes later, grumbling about stiffness and where the hell was Scout, Miss Pauling was staring at her truck. She was chewing her lower lip, she had cupped her chin in her hand and wrapped her arm around her middle and she looked like she was trying to process the fact that half of the back of her truck was no longer a lovely purple, but raw, unpretty grey. Her truck was named Lacey. She had bought her truck with cash after three months of saving up and budgeting for it. Thank god the Engineer had been willing to tune it up for her for free. Her truck had been plain, uninspired red when she’d bought it. The paint job had cost more than the actual truck, but Miss Pauling had a streak of vanity in her.

Pyro stood behind her a few moments, surveying the damage. He patted her shoulder, friendly, comforting. “It’s okay to get mad at him, sometimes. It’s hard not to. He picked like six layers of paint off a picture of his ma I made him. Honestly, he can’t help it.”

Problems. Oh, problems problems problems.

“It’s fine,” she said, finally. Because every single box they had packed in the back had also been unloaded, and she could see them all, stacked neatly on the porch. Scout was nowhere to be seen. “It needed a new coat of paint anyway.”


	16. nepotism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #14 - "nepotism" - by PreludeInZ.
> 
> **nep·o·tism**  
>  _ˈnepəˌtizəm_  
>  noun: nepotism  
> the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs.
> 
> Directly follows [#13 - "problems."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968637)

She found him in the kitchen. Flat on his back, with his head and shoulders under the sink. He’d found a wrench somewhere. Pyro had gone to check the barn. Pauling hadn’t known there was a wrench in the house. She was starting to realize she didn’t know much about anything at all out here. She didn’t want to startle him, she shuffled her feet a bit as she approached. 

“Scout?”

“Hey, Miss Pauling. Uh, sorry for not comin’ to wake you…I looked in, you an’ Pyro just looked so tired, an’ it was such a long goddamn drive. An’…well. I really wanted to keep gettin’ a look around. It is  _real_ nice here, y’weren’t kiddin’. God. Your watch is in your jacket pocket. An’ sorry ‘bout gettin’ in your kitchen, hope you don’t mind. It’s a goddamn  _nice_ kitchen, though.” He grunted and she heard a rusty squeak. “Yeah, an’ I think if I ain’t wrong about the well out back, I can get the water on in a minute here. D’you know if we c’n drink the water? Get the shower goin’, maybe.”

Pauling looked around. It was a disgusting room full of dirt and grime and decay and the oven was missing and she was in  _so_ far over her head. But maybe it had really good acoustics or something like that, because halfway under the sink, with a knee cocked up and his foot tapping on the ground, Scout sounded almost normal. She forgot he’d been awake for what was functionally at least twenty four hours. Prior to this she’d forgotten he could sound excited. “Uh huh. Yeah. Um. I have no idea about the water. Oh my god, I forgot what this place was like.” She laughed a little helplessly, wiped a hand over the island in the middle of the kitchen. It came away filthy and she wrinkled her nose. Pauling was not shy about getting her hands dirty, but this was nasty. “Scout, honestly, I am so glad I asked you and Pyro to come. I really need your help. I thought I could manage all this…well. No, I know I  _could_ manage all this by myself. But it would take me a lot longer than I thought, and I wanted to open this place up by next summer. I think maybe the summer after that might still work, if you both stay a little while. At least to help me get started.”

“Oh, sure. No, yeah, sure. That’s a great idea. Next summer? This place’ll be friggin’ gorgeous by then, Miss Pauling. I got brothers in construction, used to make me work for ‘em over the summer. Hot as hell an’ they paid me like shit, goddamn nepotism, s’what that is. Learned the word especially for the occasion of my friggin’ life. Still, though. I’m pretty handy, I guess, an’ Pyro picks shit up real fast. Hell, it ain’t half so bad as it looks. S’got…my ma used t’say, ‘bout our house. That it has good bones. So does this place.”

She laughed again, swiped indifferently at the counter and boosted herself up to sit and watch. He’d always been thin, but he’d gotten thinner and she couldn’t see his face. Scars and all, god damn if he didn’t still look incredible flat on his back. There was an exponentially growing list of problems in her head, and Scout topped it, seconded narrowly by the potability of their water. But Pauling liked problems, and there was no rush to address them. “I’m glad you think so. Well, I don’t want you to work too hard. There’s no rush. Even like this…well. I forgot about how I love it out here. It reminds me of my house, too. A long, long time ago.”

There was a metallic thud from under the sink and muffled cursing. A quiet, half-laugh at himself, the kind she would have always sworn he didn’t think anyone else could hear. Oh god. “Yeah? Tell me ‘bout that. Was thinkin’ about it an’ I don’t know nearly the first thing about you, Miss Pauling.”

_And if I have my way you’re never going to. Oh fuck. Oh fuck, don’t do this. You are really broken and you are someone else’s and I never got to just fuck you just the one time and get it out of my system. I hooked up with Bidwell twice a week for_ years _. I am a glutton for punishment, and what I settled for was bland sex with an accountant. A stupid, stupid crush, why was I always so nice to you. God. I should have been mean_.  _I should have been cruel._   _Why is he like this and how does his bony ass still look amazing._  “Oh. W-well, there’s not much to tell.”

“Aw, c’mon.” Scout shifted, and scooted his butt a little across the dusty floor.  _Oh no, oh man. Oh shoot and drat and darn it._ He sat up and grinned at her, the way he’d always used to and her cheeks grew hot and she was abruptly aware that her mouth was uncomfortably moist. She swallowed. He held a hand out. “Gimme a hand up, lemme see if the water came on.”

Miss Pauling had forgotten a lot of things. She’d forgotten about the state of her farmhouse, she’d forgotten that she’d given Scout her watch, until he’d remembered to give it back. She was still only running on about three hours of sleep. She’d forgotten that Scout had used to laugh and chatter and work with his hands and be gorgeous.

And when she hopped down from the island counter, grabbed his hand and helped him up, she failed to remember that the last time he’d stood up too quickly, he would’ve split his skull open on the edge of the table in a Chinese restaurant, if it hadn’t been for Pyro.

Scout fell like she hadn’t realized she’d been expecting him to, from the minute she’d noticed just how tired he looked. His knees buckled and he dropped like all the life had suddenly left him. And Pyro wasn’t here, he had gone to look around the barn. Miss Pauling was only about half a foot shorter than Pyro, but she was nearly a foot shorter than Scout, and even if he’d gotten scarecrow thin, he still outweighed her by few dozen pounds. So the instinct to catch him sent her painfully to her knees and the way his head jerked forward and then lolled onto her collarbone made her a different kind of giddy, a sick, viscous feeling of dread bubbling like tar in her belly.

Several things had fallen into place along with him, all of it seemed to click.

Oh. God. Oh no.


	17. last time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #15 - "last time" - by Pemm.

**RED BASE - 197X**

* * *

 

Another day.

They were all sort of starting to blur together. Had been, really. That apparently happened when you couldn’t sleep longer than half an hour at a time. And respawn didn’t help. Medic’s hallucinogens didn’t help either. Scout would have sworn it was Tuesday. Pyro quietly told him it was Friday, and that no, they weren’t in Double Cross, they had moved off to Frontier two weeks ago. Oh.

Scout had just sort of started keeping his mouth shut. Medic was beginning to complain that he wasn’t a very interesting patient anymore. Pyro didn’t talk very much these days, either. Scout kept entertaining fantasies about quitting, escaping, going home. He couldn’t go home. Medic knew he had family. What if he led Medic there? What if his brothers, his ma, what if they all had whatever weird trait it was that let the medigun work on him? No, no. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t go home. Medic would find him.

He was going to be stuck here forever.

 

* * *

 

Scout had to read the big, blocky type on the top of the handouts Miss Pauling shoved into his hands four times before he could make sense of them. He’d respawned three hours ago, had died on the table again. He still felt sick. The papers said: NOTICE OF TERMINATION.

"What—Miss Pauling? Hey, wait—"

"I’m so sorry, Scout, I wish I had more time to explain," Miss Pauling said with a sigh. She looked frazzled, or at least Scout thought so. He hadn’t seen her in a while. What did he know. "I really, really can’t stay, I have about ten thousand things to do. There’ll be a better announcement tomorrow, I think, I shouldn’t even be here but I thought it was only fair to give you guys a heads-up. If you could pass those out to everyone that would be great. Can you do that?"

"I—yeah, yeah sure but what’s—this ain’t what it looks like, is it?"

"I’m afraid so," Miss Pauling said with a sigh. "RED’s folding. BLU too. I’m going to do my best to get you all references, at the very least. I know it’s sudden."

She kept talking. She kept talking, saying things Scout knew he could hear, but it was like he was underwater. Mumble, mumble, mumble. He couldn’t think.

Something touched his arm. He yelled, ripping backwards, straight-up slamming into the wall. “Shit— _ow_ —”

"Oh my God, I’m sorry—are you okay? Scout?" Miss Pauling again. Had she touched him? Scout couldn’t see, everything was black, his head hurt. He was holding something. What was he holding? It was like there was an alarm going off in the back of his skull. "Scout?"

“‘M fine,” he said instantly. “I’ll, I’ll pass these out. Yeah. Don’t worry.”

His sight was coming back in. Medic had been getting pissy about his fainting spells, said they interfered. He had given Scout pills he was supposed to be taking. Pyro had taken them away. That was fine. The pills were supposed to make him sleep, for at least a few hours, Medic had said. Pyro’s face had twisted up when Scout told him that, and he’d given the pills back. Scout took them, but then he’d thrown them over the bridge at Double Cross, even though he was sure Medic would find out, and then he’d be fucked. But he wanted sleep less than he wanted to be able to make sure things were safe.

It was fine. The blackouts never lasted much longer than a minute. He could see Miss Pauling again, looking up at him with a knit brow, hugging a huge stack of papers to her chest with one hand. She was cute. She was always cute, Scout’s crush on her hadn’t ever totally gone away even after he got together with Pyro. Was he supposed to be saying something?

Wait. The papers. “I’ll take care’a it, Miss Pauling.” NOTICE OF TERMINATION. “See you around.”

"Are you sure you’re alright? You hit the wall pretty hard…"

"Yeah! Yeah no, I’m—I’m fine, it’s cool, thanks Miss Pauling. I’m fine."

NOTICE OF TERMINATION.

Miss Pauling, apparently convinced, finally said goodbye and left. Scout waited until she was gone.

NOTICE OF TERMINATION.

He’d respawned three hours ago. Scout turned on his heel and ran.

 

* * *

 

The door exploded open and Pyro nearly fell off his bed. “ _Jesus_ —wha—”

Scout. Scout with his shoulders heaving, panting hard, he’d been running, what had he been running from? Pyro didn’t get to ask. Scout darted inside, throwing the door shut behind him, leaning on it. “Scout,” Pyro said carefully, putting down his notebook and standing as Scout collapsed back against the door. “Scout, tell me what’s wrong. Are you okay?”

Scout swallowed, nodded. Looked at what he held in his right hand, took a huge gasp of a breath, and shoved the handful of papers into Pyro’s hands before sliding down to the ground.

Pyro looked at them. He flipped them over, skimmed them, read the front again. It took him a long time to speak. “… Where did you get this?”

Scout had covered his face. His words were muffled under his hands. “Miss Pauling.”

"No fucking way."

"Said th—said there’s a. Gonna be an annoucement t’morrow or somethin’."

"Oh my God." What else was there to even say? "Oh my God. Scout—Scout, this means—"

“ _I know what it means._ " His answer was like a distant gunshot, a cracking, faraway cannon boom. "I  _know_.” At last he lifted his head, staring up at Pyro. “I c—I can’t go home, Pyro, I can’t. Not like—I can’t. What’m I gonna do? What if Medic—”

"Shhh, no," Pyro said sharply, dropping to his knees beside him, gathering Scout in his arms. "No no no. This is good, okay? This is  _really good._  We’re going to get away from—this. Okay? Scout, look at me.” He wouldn’t. He was breathing fast, too fast, fuck, he was going to start hyperventilating again. Pyro pulled him against himself, pressing a hard kiss to his forehead. “It’s going to be okay. It’s  _going to be okay._  We’re gonna get out of here, both of us, we’re gonna be okay. I’ll take care of it. Leave it to me.”

"… You said that last time," was all Scout said, less than a whisper, but not so much that Pyro could pretend he didn’t hear it.


	18. hospice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #16 - "hospice" - by PreludeInZ.
> 
> Directly follows [#14 - "nepotism."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968661)

When Pyro came into the kitchen, she was just crying. She had struggled and shifted backwards, leaving a trail in the dust on the floor, until she could lean up against the island. Scout was just gone, slackened and limp and ragged in her arms. Breathing, because at the end of the day, almost every day, Pyro was still astonished by what it took to actually kill Scout. The sight of the pair of them made  _him_ want to cry, but he was well aware how unhelpful that would be. He cleared his throat instead, though there was nothing he wanted to say. “I guess it was probably about time,” he said anyway, lamely.

Miss Pauling sniffled. Angrily. She thrust her fingers through Scout’s hair, gently ferocious. “How the hell could you do this to me? How  _dare_  you do this to me.”

Pyro blinked. “Uh…”

She lifted her head and glared up at him, dust smeared and muddied on her cheeks where she had tried to wipe her shining eyes. “You brought him here to die. This is my  _home_ , it is not a fucking hospice. How  _could_ you?”

Pyro was a man of few words, but he was rarely struck dumb. Not metaphorically, at least. He ran his tongue over his teeth, still fully in command of his voice. It hadn’t left him, but it was hiding, and rightly so, because in her tears and her fury, Miss Pauling was beautiful and frightening.

He knew for sure, where Scout was concerned, that he would feel awful if he ever found out he’d made her cry. He had a ridiculous crush on Miss Pauling. Pyro thought she was okay looking, not really his type. Too mousy, too librarianish. Scout had been telling him for years that Miss Pauling was “the scary kind of pretty”.  Pyro hadn’t ever known what he had meant until now.

Pauling clenched her teeth, bared them at him. “What is this. You tell me. Is this…god, look at him. Oh, god, how did I let this happen. His face, his  _arms_. …Cancer? Drugs. Scout’s not the type to…he wasn’t, I mean. Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Why he won’t go  _home_. I never put any of this together, it makes so much sense. I could’ve added it up right at the beginning, but you two distracted me and I didn’t.  _Fuck_.”

It made perfect sense. It would have been an excellent lie. Pyro was a terrible liar, he couldn’t lie to save his life, nor Scout’s, apparently. He sat down, cautiously, not too close, because Miss Pauling looked like she would bite. Pyro knew acutely what that looked like. “It’s not that.”

She stared at him, calculating. “Something else. Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“I think you’d be shocked to find that you fucking well can. I was up to my  _neck_ in work for the entire year before RED folded, but I  _could’ve helped with this_. Why didn’t you tell me. If it’s because of the two of you…together…I don’t care. I swear I don’t care, it doesn’t matter. This is so much more important. Nothing is supposed to go on in those bases without me knowing.”

Pyro cracked a smile, tiredly, the way he did when he knew it was inappropriate and he couldn’t help it and didn’t care. Miss Pauling was an idiot. Miss Pauling didn’t know a fucking thing. She thought she could have helped. Adorable. Well, that was just goddamn hysterical. “Well, I’ve been fucking him for five years, you never noticed that.”

“Oh my god. What the fuck is your  _problem_.” That had been a very bad joke to make at this particular time. Pyro played with fire. He should have known better than to play with Miss Pauling. “Who  _are_ you and how the  _hell_ did you get in my house?”

He shrugged. “You invited us. I’m just saying, you don’t know him.” And suddenly, he didn’t want to fight with her. She wasn’t worth the effort. None of them had planned for what it was going to be like when they actually arrived. Well, they were all here now, and two of them didn’t belong. “Look, we’ll leave. I’m sorry. I didn’t think…I’m used to him. I forget what he looks like from the outside. Like this. Let him sleep another hour or so, and then if you drive us out to the highway, we’ll get out of your hair. I’m sorry. It wouldn’t have been fair to ask you to take this on, and I didn’t even. Ask, I mean. We’re a lot to handle.”

“I can’t…I couldn’t…” She was just gaping at him now and her shock was somehow worse than her anger. Her faltering voice. “…Pyro. You…you  _do_ know he’s dying? What the hell does he look like to you, that you don’t see he’s dying?”

She looked down, and he tried for a moment to see what she saw. Just, youth and scars and exhaustion and fear. Just Scout. He looked at a little closer at her, though. Pauling. Pyro had gone to art school. The only time he had been proud of the derivative, kowtowing work he’d turned into his lunatic professor had been an Art Nouveau rendering of Pieta. He was looking at it now.

In spite of everything, he still said, “…he’s not, though.”

Miss Pauling lifted her head again, and she’d gone from fury to shock to grief. “He doesn’t trust me. You do. He’s right not to. Because the last time I held someone like this, I killed him. Just killed him. I sat on the bed and I put a pillow over his face and he was my Papa and no one else would do it. And then they sent me away.”

Pyro realized that Scout knew a lot more about Miss Pauling than he did, but neither of them had known that. Scarier than she was pretty. And more protective, better able to see what Scout had become than he was. She didn’t know him. Didn’t know about how Scout was less of a person and more of a walking, talking savior-complex. Pyro sometimes couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Most of the time he burnt the forest down. Maybe they really needed her. “I can’t tell you what happened.”

“I need to know.”

“It’s not mine to tell. I can…what…what do you need to know.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “There’s a briefcase on the porch. Bring it here.”

Pyro smiled his inappropriate smile again. “Hard labour and fetching things. Oh, I should’ve known that’s all you think we’re good for. Maybe one or two other things?”

Miss Pauling had eyes like a demon when she looked up at him now. She had Scout mostly in her lap and cradled his head on her knees. She held his hand. Pyro would have expected that he would’ve woken up again, snapped out of it by now. Maybe there was something to the way she held him, the sound of her voice. Except she was really, really angry again. “You try flirting with me one more time, I will make your little spell back at RED look like a hissy fit.”

Pyro shut up and went to get her briefcase.

 

* * *

 

She sighed when he’d left the room, deflated. He would only be gone a minute or two, but she lowered her face, kissed Scout on the cheek. Compassion. Compassion would kill her every time. She hadn’t been meant for the Badlands. The Badlands were where the scrubs worked. Miss Pauling had been sent away. She’d been sent to a place where her willingness to kill people was a valuable skill. Miss Pauling had burnt herself out, scouring the globe for Australium, to fuel an engine that cheated death.

The Badlands were supposed to have been an easy, low pressure environment. Manage the mercs. Not complicated.

Right.

Pyro returned with her briefcase in hand. He put it down on the floor beside her. Stepped back, glowered a bit. Pauling reached over, unlatched it. Ran a finger over her pistol, her silencer. Moved on to the rows of silver vials. Sedatives and hypnotics for days. She was glad Pyro was too much of a moron to look inside. Maybe he was only well-trained.

“Look, don’t bother. Shake him a bit, he’ll wake up. This is stupid, you’re on the floor in a hellhole of a kitchen with my boyfriend.”

“You say one more word that isn’t in response to what  _I ask_ , I’m going to hit you with a shovel, drive your sorry ass to the highway, drop  _you_ off, and come back and do what you should’ve been. Tell me what he’s taking. Tell me if he has any really serious symptoms. Respiratory depression, that kind of thing. Counter indicators. I need to know.”

Pyro did. The worst thing was that it was mostly just sleep deprivation. “You idiots. You absolute idiots, this is such an easy fix. How much does he weigh?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

Miss Pauling looked a little appalled. “You have a temper. Fine. I get it. If I’d been putting up with you for five years, maybe I’d look like he does too. He needs to sleep. Pyro, I once kept a man awake for a week. When I shot him at the end of it, it was basically out of mercy. He can’t keep doing this. Not in my house, I won’t permit it.”

"And I share a bed with him, I’ve been watching him do this for years, you think I haven’t tried everything? I don’t know what to do with him anymore. If you think you can fix it, fine, try, but I’m telling you it’s not going to help."

She sighed, wearily. They had had exactly the same amount of sleep. Pyro ran very rough on not-enough-sleep, and Scout was like a black hole where sleep was concerned. He was so dark from the lack of it that he pulled it out of anyone near him. “Well, maybe you might be part of the problem.”

“You’re not some silver bullet. He doesn’t  _get_ fixed. If you knew half of what we’d been through…” Pyro stopped, bit his tongue. WIshed she didn’t make him feel the need to talk about it. He pushed it. “But even if you did, you wouldn’t understand. You’re not going to be able to fix it, and good luck trying to get him to sleep anywhere but glued on to  _me_. You’re no better than I am, anyway. I’m not the one who killed my father.”

Miss Pauling pulled a syringe of something out of her briefcase and Pyro felt cold all over. She was like a shock of frigid water and he was suddenly too afraid of her to be angry. “Wha…wait. Wait. No, wait, don’t. Please don’t, I’m sorry. I didn’t…fuck. I didn’t mean it. Please, please don’t. I love him, I didn’t mean it. He just makes me so tired and I just get so mad. I get mean. He doesn’t deserve it, he doesn’t want to die. Please.”

She did anyway, and Pyro thought his heart would stop. He was certain Scout’s already had. Pauling looked up at him, all green-eyed contempt. “It’s just a sedative, you ninny.” She paused a moment. “And my Papa was my grandfather.”


	19. chiaroscuro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #17 - "chiaroscuro" - by Pemm.
> 
> Directly follows [#16 - "hospice."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968754)

It had been morning when Scout thought he’d take a look at the sink, around eleven when he’d asked Miss Pauling to help him up. He had only partially done that because trying to get up by himself sounded like a damn bad idea. Getting to hold Miss Pauling’s hand was appealing—different from Pyro’s, all calloused and rough, fine blond hair on the backs. Miss Pauling had remarkably smooth hands for someone whose secretarial work largely involved handling shovels and saws.

Anyway. Ten, eleven in the morning. Sun wasn’t all the way up yet. When Scout blinked awake, slowly, it took him a shockingly long while to put things together. Scout did not wake up slow. He dropped out of existence and then jolted back into it, cursing and dizzy but sharply aware. It was necessary, unpleasant or not. His whole fucking life was unpleasant. He needed to know what was happening, where he was, where Pyro was, where Medic was.

Only Medic wasn’t even in the same country anymore. That, for some reason, was the first thing he remembered upon waking. The next was that it had been eleven’o’clock just a few seconds ago, but the window set above the sink he could just see out of showed a sky painted with sunset pinks.

He tried to push himself up. It was slow going, and just sitting upright made him dizzy. A thick fog crawled through his brain. He closed his eyes and groaned and when he realized he was sitting on something hard for one sick panicky second he thought he was back on Medic’s table. That was what sent him to his feet, practically leaping upright, staggering forward until he hit the sink. Hard.

The voice that called to him was not Medic’s. “Oh, geez, Scout. Scout?” It was beside him. Below him. Medic was taller than he was. Everything was still a little bleary when he turned his head and took in the lavender blur at his side. “Are you okay?”

“I’m … ’m fine.” His mouth tasted fucking  _awful_. “What time is it?”

“Oh, uh.” As he dragged his tongue along his mouth, trying to shake the taste off, Miss Pauling checked her watch. “Um… about nine’o’clock.”

“It … what?” That dragged his attention back to her. “Ain’t it like—it’s like, eleven.”

Miss Pauling hesitated. Miss Pauling was not a person who hesitated. “Nine in the evening, Scout.”

“N— _nine_ —”

He looked out the window again. He could not see the sun from it, the overgrown trees blocking the horizon on the right, but it was definitely growing darker.

Scout looked back down, gripping the edge of the sink so hard the backs of his knuckles all went white. It didn’t occur to him how loud his breathing was until Miss Pauling cleared her throat. “Sorry if I let you sleep too long. You seemed like you, you know. Needed it.”

“But I, I don’t. I don’t ever sleep that …” He had lifted his arm to rub at one eye, and an ache on the inside of his elbow stilled him. He dropped off mid-sentence, staring at it. Couldn’t tell if it looked different. Tapped it with two fingers, quick, hard, he was never going to be able to forget how to bring out a vein, Medic had made him do it too many times.

Was never going to forget what the soreness from an injection felt like, either.

“… Miss, uh, Miss Pauling,” he started slowly, not looking at her, staring at his arm. Maybe the skin was a little red. Maybe there was a little stain of blood there. “Did … you didn’t …” He took a deep, slow breath. “You didn’t stick me with a needle or nothin’ like that, didja?”

She didn’t answer right away. The sky was getting darker. When Scout looked at her again her face was half in shadow. Dimly, he registered the kitchen around him: luggage here and there, crates and boxes, half-unpacked. Pyro was nowhere. Everything looked like those paintings both his mother and Pyro liked so much, those light-and-dark ones. Chiaroscuros. “… I did. Yes. Just to help you sleep. It was only a mild sedative, just to keep you relaxed, keep you from waking yourself up.”

Scout was real glad he was still leaning on the sink, because the way his head spun and pounded after she said that, the way his gut twisted and the way his breathing quickened, it probably would have dropped him.


	20. campfire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #18 - "campfire" - by PreludeInZ.
> 
> Alludes to [#1.5 - "about eleanor."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5951642)

The problem with stories about Eleanor was that they got told around campfires. Or as bedtime stories. The problem with stories about Eleanor was that nobody believed they were true, because they sounded like myths or legends or cautionary tales.

Pauling was slowly, deliberately toasting a marshmallow. She’d burnt her last three, and she had high standards about what a campfire marshmallow should be. Scout had turned up his nose at marshmallows, but that may have been on account of eating six hot dogs in a row. Pyro and Pauling had made ribald jokes about this until Scout was in danger of choking to death. Now he’d curled up on an Adirondack chair on the other side of the fire, and was idly scrawling something in the sketchpad Noah had given to him.

Noah was sitting on a log. He had a long stick of ash in hand and he was trying to be surreptitious about the fact that he was making it into a cane. It wasn’t that Scout needed a cane. It was more the symbolism of it, something to lean on. He’d never been much of a sculptor so he planned to keep it simple, but he’d found a piece of wood in the barn below the hayloft, one of the pieces that hadn’t been too rotten. They never went up there anyway. He’d pried it loose, hefted it a few times. Light, strong. There was something evocative about old wood. It felt honest.

Maybe that was part of why he felt like being Noah tonight, and because he’d been missing Eleanor. Pauling’s family was long gone, and Scout was still trying to forget about his, but Pyro’s sister lived close to his heart and he’d made a beautiful fire, the sort that made him think of her. So Noah felt like telling a few stories about Eleanor. Pauling hadn’t heard much about Eleanor. Scout had always enjoyed listening to him talk about his sister.

He wasn’t much of a storyteller, his stories tended not to have the same effortlessly enticing narrative structure that Scout’s did. Scout could wind a yarn for miles, Scout’s stories had characters and morals and multiple meandering tangents that always looped back around and resolved themselves bombastically at the end. Pauling was a born bullshitter. That had been a shock to him and Scout both, because she’d built up into it gradually, over the course of two years. Pauling had said she’d been to New Zealand. Pauling had said she’d been to the Moon. Scout still sort of believed her about the former, even though he’d been told, time and again, that New Zealand was a myth.

Scout had a sunburn. He’d been up tar papering the roof of the barn, and despite urging from Pauling, who didn’t know any better than not to waste the effort, he’d tugged his shirt off over his head in the midst of the heat of the day, and was paying for it now. The roof of the barn was only half done, but he’d be back at it tomorrow. It needed to be refinished before the rain set in towards the end of summer, there was rot and mildew up in the hayloft. Pauling wouldn’t even go into the barn, not since she’d had an asthma attack in the middle of it.

But that was a tomorrow problem. They were all comfortably full of gooey sugar and processed pork and an alarming amount of mustard in Pauling’s case. The talk had died down amiably as they’d all settled into their own little ruts of thought. The sky had been red at sunset, there’d be rain before morning. The air smelled of wood smoke and damp grass,the faint smell of burnt sugar. A perfect night for Eleanor stories.

Noah cleared his throat. Pauling’s eyes flickered towards him from her marshmallow, just for a moment of acknowledgement before returning to her task. Scout added about a dozen more dots to the curve of his arm, then looked up. “Hey, did I ever tell you guys about the worst sunburn I ever got? It was back when me and Eleanor were kids…”

Scout cocked his head and rolled his eyes derisively across the leaping sparks above the campfire. “Aw, knock it off. I’m over that. That ain’t necessary.”

“Huh? I thought you liked Eleanor?”

He shrugged. “Oh, sure. But c’mon, man. Clearly you made her up. S’cute an’ all, You got an imaginary sister you like to talk about in bed, that ain’t…like…Freudian or anythin’, I’m sure. S’just. I dunno. Campfire. Oughta have a ghost story.”

Pauling lit up at this suggestion. “Ooh, I can tell a ghost story and a half.”

Noah blinked. Ghost stories. He was a little irritated for a moment, but then he grinned. “If we’re making stuff up, then. Sure, let’s have it, Pauling.” Ghost stories. He hadn’t talked to Eleanor in a couple years. Eleanor could be invited to visit. Eleanor was the sort of person who would, if asked, cover herself in horrific stage makeup, until she looked like a burn victim, and break into a bedroom window in the middle of the night and scare the shit out of her brother’s irritatingly skeptical boyfriend, screaming “AVENGE ME.”

Pyro had always been a sweetheart. But Noah had a mean streak a mile wide. He would need to call Eleanor in the morning.


	21. briarpatch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It was Scout she’d always thought had a crush on her, but it was Pyro she slept with first. Slept with was the wrong way to put it. Fucked. Just fucked him, because there’d been mounting sexual tension for months and when the storm had broken it had been raw and brutal and hot."
> 
> #19 - "briarpatch" - by Pemm.

It had been a warm night, and they’d left the window open and the crickets were so loud as to be screaming instead of singing, and Scout had looked at Pyro and grinned and said they ought to try and do better than them.

It had been a while. There hadn’t been space or privacy for much of anything between them for that first month at Miss Pauling’s, not between the sleeping bags and using the truck’s cab as a bed. But the place was looking like a proper home these days, and Scout and Pyro had picked out a room for themselves and gotten a needlessly large mattress. Maybe not needlessly. The mattress had been one of their best purchases. It was thick and soft and not prone to wake Pyro when Scout inevitably got up at four in the morning to make sure the locks were locked, and big enough that Scout’s kneejerk kicking usually missed.

It was also a damn fine mattress for other reasons. One: it didn’t squeak. Two: it was heavy enough it didn’t shake when they were rolling around on it. (They’d found that out right away, agreeing that it was the only proper way to christen a mattress.) And that was how they’d started more regularly being a couple again.

Now: they were entangled and kissing and groping, Scout pulled into Pyro’s lap, hands on thighs, lips on throats. And truthfully Pyro thought nothing of it when he opened his mouth a little wider and bit down on Scout’s shoulder, maybe a little harder than he should’ve, but he was excited and turned on and feeling adventurous, and it wasn’t his fault if his fantasies had changed.

Scout, though. “Ow—what the hell, ow, don’t do that.”

Pyro let go, hesitated. Didn’t speak. Kissed him on the indentations his teeth had made.

Just a hiccup. He nuzzled Scout’s jaw and nipped his ear, he knew that was okay, and Scout exhaled and ran his hands down Pyro’s sides.

They kept going. They got pretty fucking far, too and then—later Pyro wouldn’t even remember the exact details. Just that Scout had tried to do something, touch himself or Pyro maybe, and Pyro had grabbed his arms and pinned him to the bed and growled _“Hold still!”_

The look on Scout’s face. If he was frank with himself, Pyro had not seen that degree of terror in his eyes since … since they’d left RED. What was more was that he saw that look, recognized it, and ignored it, ignored it even when Scout said, shrill, “Leggo!”

“Would you just—”

Scout kicked him, and Scout kicked like a mule. That was enough to make Pyro let go, and as he was cursing and wincing, Scout had nearly fallen off the bed in trying to get away. He managed to keep his feet under him, but it was a near thing. Pyro stared after him mutely as he grabbed the first pair of shorts he found and fumbled to drag them on. “… S, Scout—”

“Don’t,” he snapped in a faint voice. “Just, just don’t, fucking don’t talk to me, don’t.”

Pyro was already getting off the bed. “Scout, I’m sorr—”

“Don’t fuckin’ come _near_ me you fuckin’ _psycho_!”

He’d yelled it. Nearly screamed it. Pyro winced and froze and did nothing else as Scout stumbled toward the door, pulled it open, and yanked it shut after him. It didn’t even close, banging against the frame and drifting back open after he’d left. Pyro could hear that unpleasant thumping half-run going down the hall, the quickest pace Scout could manage now.

Pyro sat in the dark, staring at nothing.

 

* * *

 

Miss Pauling had had a long day. The outlets in the kitchen were acting up. Scout had broken one of her favorite mugs. Pyro had burned about three things he shouldn’t have, because it turned out when you gave a pyromaniac a stack of papers to start a bonfire with he wasn’t probably going to check to see if there were any unpaid bills in it. Add to that the way Pyro and Scout had been looking at each other  _all day._  Bedroom eyes. Bidwell hadn’t even known what bedroom eyes were. Miss Pauling had spent most of the day feeling left out.

And five minutes ago there had been yelling across the hall, followed by the unmistakable sound of Scout running off, and while the yelling was not entirely unusual it was never one single burst, and it was never Scout.

Miss Pauling stared at her dark ceiling for a full three minutes before getting up.

Across the hall, the boys’ door was cracked open, more than a little. Moonlight spilled through their open window, flooding out into the hall. Carefully, Pauling had eased the door open, knocked lightly on the doorframe. The figured hunched in on itself on the bed did nothing. “Pyro?”

It jumped, lifting its head. Ah. Hm. Pyro with his shirt off was a vanishingly rare sight. The last time Pauling had seen him as such was the night they’d all gotten drunk and played strip poker. That had been a good night. Pyro had hair on his chest. “Uh—uh, Pauling,” he said carefully, reaching over and pulling one of the pillows into his lap. Oh. Ohhh. “Um. I guess we woke you up.”

“I guess so. Can I come in?” He made a vague gesture. She took it as a yes, shut the door quietly behind her. “So … Scout having a night?”

In the darkness, Pyro sighed, long and low and listless. “No. I fucked up, I … don’t know. Shit, you don’t want the gory details of my sex life.” Well. “I was … too rough. I scared him, I just thought … I don’t know what I thought. Fuck.”

“I’m sorry,” Pauling said softly, and, well, the bed was right there. She sank down onto it and wow it was soft. Wow. She needed a mattress like this. “Do you want to—I don’t know. Talk about it?”

A frustrated, resigned sort of sound in the half-dark. “It’s just. I love him, I love him with everything, we’ve just … things are different. I was too rough, I didn’t even think, I only did what I wanted. I keep forgetting I have to be careful with him even out here. I have to be so careful with him  _all the time_ , you know?” Pauling did. “I’m so tired of having to be careful. It’s exhausting. I’m sick of it, Pauling. And then he gets scared and kicks me off and he’ll probably be in the woods all night now and nothing gets solved. I still want something he can’t give and now he’s afraid of me.” He sighed. Shook his head.

God. These two were a briarpatch. Well, she was already tangled up. Why not a little more. “Just need to get it out of your system, huh,” she said sympathetically.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” A long pause. “Do you think that would work?”

They way he said it was low and soft and there was a question in it different from the one he’d actually asked, and Pauling was suddenly very aware of a growing heat in her cheeks. The delicate choice in front of her made her head spin, and from more than just the long-term implications. Normally Pauling was good about focusing on those.

Here, now, with Pyro sitting uncertain and undressed and smelling of sex just six inches away from her, it was much, much more difficult.

Pauling swallowed. Wet her lips.

“It might.”


	22. need

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Pyro had nearly yanked the door of their bedroom off its hinges, and kicked Scout into the hallway. Miss Pauling had already been woken up by the yelling, and after a few minutes, she had poked her head out of her own bedroom door, and then padded out in her nightgown, taken Scout by the hand, and pulled him in after her."
> 
> #20 - "need" - by PreludeInZ.
> 
> Alludes to [#19 - "briarpatch."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968829)

She would’ve just left him in the hallway, if he hadn’t been thumping the back of his head against the outside of her bedroom wall. She’d heard the shouting. The walls were thick enough that she never got to hear the words, or any of the really interesting bits of whatever else went on between the two of them, but she knew she was caught up in the reasons for it. Then she’d heard the door slam, and hoped it would be Noah’s furious stomping, the kind that shook the whole house. She’d hoped he would pound on her door, angry. But inwardly and not outwardly, and that they would have the same sort of night they’d had, just a week ago. The night she’d finally gotten to stop being jealous of Scout.

But no, no fury shaking the house. Just a weary shuffle and then an audible slump against the wall. Then, after a few long minutes, the slow, repetitive thud of his head against her wall. Not even hard, just continuous.

Noah could sleep through that sort of thing. Pauling couldn’t.

It made her ache inside, because probably Scout didn’t even realize he was doing it. There were a billion little things Scout didn’t know he did. She remembered vividly a day early on, when they’d been whitewashing the walls in her bedroom, and she’d told him off for biting his nails, and he’d jumped and stared in horror at the ends of his fingers, because they were bloody and raw and he hadn’t realized. There were red streaks on the white of the one wall by the window. Pyro had just sort of rolled his eyes when she’d mentioned it. He hadn’t noticed either, but how a person could fail to notice Scout’s hands baffled her. Especially a person who got to be touched by them. She’d fallen in love with Scout’s hands a long time before she’d fallen in love with the rest of Scout.

Then she’d taken his hands and painted his nails with a special bottle of polish, her favourite shade of deep mauve. That had cheered him up a bit, made him laugh at himself. Then she’d told him that it wasn’t really toxic, but he would probably throw up for about a day if he bit them and chipped the polish. That was a lie, but she told it kindly. The poison nail polish was actually a delicate violet.

There were a lot of things she noticed about Scout. A lot of things that she hadn’t noticed about him, a long time ago, when he’d used to trip over himself trying to get her attention. Miss Pauling had had kind of a blind spot for people who cavorted about for her attention. Half the reason she’d gone for Bidwell was because she thought he’d been playing hard to get. He had not been playing hard to get. He was just oblivious.

She’d continued to sleep with Bidwell because it was easier than breaking things off. Because Bidwell thought she was raw and exciting and he was just so puppyishly thrilled to be having a workplace affair. Bidwell had a wife and he felt terrible and cried after sex, but didn’t stop having it with her. Pauling hadn’t cared at all about Bidwell or his wife, and that had been much, much worse. Probably the worst things she’d ever done, she’d indifferently done to Bidwell, and he hadn’t even realized.

The thumping outside her bedroom door stopped.

Pauling resolved to be much, much kinder to Scout, as she threw back the blankets from her bed—only a double, not a monstrous king like Noah’s. Correction: Scout and Pyro’s. Stop thinking about Noah. Pauling wore a nightdress, sometimes, because she liked to feel pretty and old-fashioned. It was still white only because she hadn’t pulled down an old washtub from the barn so she could dye it purple.

Her bedroom door creaked on its hinges and she padded into the hallway in her bare feet.

In her very first memories of Scout, he was someone who sprawled all over the place. He had been someone who stretched out, took up space, lanky and indolent. He’d used to smile like the sun coming up when he saw her. Now when he smiled it was like he was afraid someone would catch him at it, and he didn’t smile at the sight of her now.

It broke her heart to see him hunched up and with his hands clenched together on his knees, head bowed. Prayerful, almost. Pauling was the opposite of an angel.

“Hey,” was all she said, softly, brushing her fingertips across his knuckles. And then, “C’mere,” as she took his hand, helped him up, because she knew from experience that he needed that. And she let him have a moment to steady himself before leading him back through her bedroom door and pausing just inside, leaving it open just a crack. Pyro had dropped warnings to her, like breadcrumbs, about Scout. Not to get between him and a door, if it could be avoided. Not to touch him too much, especially not to poke or prod him. To let him get away with repetitive behaviours, picking at paint, tearing up napkins. 

Pauling thought some of this was kind of bullshit.

Well, now she was in deep, because now he looked at her, with those baby blue eyes. Pauling suspected Scout didn’t know what he did with his eyes. “Do you want to sit down?” she asked, still gentle, indicating the bed behind her. “Just to talk.”

He shook his head and leaned back against the door, pushing it shut. He dropped to the floor again and tilted his head back, eyes closing. Miss Pauling crouched in front of him, night dress pooling on the drafty floor around her feet, close but not too close. She let him have a few more quiet moments, and then put her hand gently, firmly on his knee. “Scout, if you want to say anything, I’ll listen.”

Pauling remembered how it had used to be impossible to get Scout to shut up. She was about to prompt him again, get him started, when he opened his eyes and looked at her. It was chilly on the floor, with the pair of them sitting in the dark. Clouded moonlight slanted through the window. “Don’t blame you if you don’t believe me,” he managed finally. “But…used t’be a time he needed me more’n I need him.”

She sat, scooted a little closer. “I believe you.”

“Nobody needs me anymore. And don’t say you do, ‘cuz I hate to be lied to. I wanna…I oughta leave. Miss Pauling…thanks for everything. Everything, I mean it. Every fucking thing. I just…I ain’t enough. Not anymore. Might be I wasn’t ever. I hate t’ hafta think that.”

Scout had used to babble a mile a minute, at length, about any given subject. He’d used to misspeak and double talk constantly, needed to back up after getting ahead of himself. Now every word of his was carefully chosen. And he’d said fucking very deliberately.

Pauling winced. Not because he’d been mad when he said it, but because he hadn’t. “You have to know he loves you.” She took Scout’s hand, squeezed his fingers gently. “I know he loves you.” She paused, because it did no good to patronize him. “He told me. It’s only that he doesn’t want to hurt you, and he’s afraid he won’t be able to help it. Sometimes people need to hurt other people to get through things. Sometimes they think the only people they have are the ones they love.”

That might have been the wrong thing to say, but she was fairly sure it wasn’t. Scout hunched down further away from her, though. “Then I am a useless goddamn failure if he has to fall back on hurtin’ you insteada me.”

“Scout, no. I swear, no. He couldn’t hurt me if he tried. There’s a lot you don’t know about me—a lot _we_ don’t know about each other. There are things I need. I don’t know if you’ll understand them.”

“Because I am an idiot and a fucked up cripple.”

“Scout,” she said sternly, then shivered. It was cold on the floor. She clambered to her feet, retreated back into her bed. “Hold that thought. It’s freezing, Scout, you still sleep in your clothes, and that’s fine, but I’m in my nightie and it’s cold in here.” She resisted the urge to make a joke about juicing lemons on her nipples. You had to go gently with Scout. “Come on, sit. I want us to talk, let’s at least be comfortable. Please, come.”

She beckoned him up to sit on her bed, just at the edge. Pauling tucked her feet under her duvet and leaned back against the frame. He was further away now, sat at the end of the mattress, fingers clinging to the wrought iron of the footboard. “I need you to stop talking like that, Scout, please. No one thinks about you that way.”

“You an’ Pyro…”

Pauling cut him off, firmly, “…are entitled to think about you however we want. Scout, I don’t know what happened to you. Part of me doesn’t want to, because it makes me really afraid that you could get hurt like this without my knowing. Scout, it was my job to take care of you, of all of you. Back in the Badlands. Something happened on my watch, and don’t know what, but I am so, so sorry.”

He had lifted his head, was staring at her now. “H-hey. No, it…Miss Pauling. Nobody’s fault but mine, I had…always had a way out of it. Just never took it, on accounta I’m kind of a goddamn coward.”

“Scout, I asked you please to stop that. I need you to stop that, it makes me really unhappy.”

Scout shifted, his eyes hardened slightly. “Maybe I don’t care what you need.”

Pauling had been waiting for that. She shrugged, and when the shoulder of her night gown slipped forward, baring her collarbone, she slid it back into place. Drew her knees up to her chest, modestly. “I always thought you cared about me, at least a little. I always thought I was really lucky that you did. I thought we were at least friends, at least by now. But maybe you don’t care what Pyro needs either. I know he tries really hard to do what he thinks you need. I know I do, too. I know I’ve made mistakes about that, before, and I’m sorry for that, too. I want to try and do better.”

The drive out from the house ran for about a mile and a half before it hit the road that led to the highway. The silence of the place was one of the things Pauling loved most about it. She’d noticed, about Scout, that he could hear a car on the road, a mile off. He would stop in the middle of doing anything, he would turn his head and freeze until he couldn’t hear it anymore. Scout hadn’t used to listen, not like he did now. He’d gotten better at it, but he still seemed not to have understood what she meant. Pauling hated it, a little bit, that he didn’t chatter at her anymore. That he just sort of stared blankly, that he couldn’t even imagine what she was asking. “Miss Pauling…”

“Just Pauling’s fine, Scout.” She pushed up on the bed, kneeling, and scooted over on her knees to sit next to him. “You’re right that I don’t need you.”

“…yeah. No, I know that. Miss…uhm. Pauling. You don’t gotta…even with everything, even if I am properly fucked up—an’ I’m just sayin’, ‘cuz it’s true,” Scout paused, clenched his jaw slightly. “I don’t need you feelin’ sorry for me. Please.”

She touched his arm. “I know. I’ll try not to. If there’s anything you do need, though…anything Pyro’s not good for. I know he’s not always gentle, I know he’s angry, I know he can get mean. I know he can be scary. He needs to be those things. I don’t. I’m just saying. If you needed anything like that. Anything not like him. I want you to need something like that.”

His eyes, goddamn his eyes, that lovely, lonely blue. Still looking at her, like he didn’t quite understand. Hesitantly, he took her hand, then seemed not to know what to do after that. Sometimes you had to push Scout, a little bit. “Like me,” she said, softly. Lifted his fingers to her collarbone, slipped free again, bared.


	23. leave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Nobody needs me anymore. And don’t say you do, ‘cuz I hate to be lied to. I wanna…I oughta leave. Miss Pauling…thanks for everything. Everything, I mean it. Every fucking thing. I just…I ain’t enough. Not anymore. Might be I wasn’t ever. I hate t’ hafta think that.”
> 
> #21 - "leave" - by Pemm.

What Pyro had done was sat her down, taken her aside, and he kept glancing over his shoulder. Miss Pauling had been right in the middle of the dishes. Couldn’t he have waited until she was done, at the very least? “Pyro,  _what_?”

He looked tongue-tied. Not in the way he did when he truly couldn’t speak, but in a way that made her think he was unsure of what words were the ones he needed. “I … look. Has Scout … has he said anything to you about, um, leaving?”

She blinked at him, wicking the last of the damp on her hands on her dress. “Leaving?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t … think so. Why? Does he want to leave?”

Pyro winced. “He … look. If he starts telling you that he wants to leave or he’s  _going_  to leave, or go away, or anything like—any words like that,” and he grimaced harder at that one, what was Pyro doing?, “you have to tell me  _right away._  I need you to promise me that.”

Well, that wasn’t suspicious at all. Miss Pauling mulled over this, then squinted at him. “Why?”

“I just need you to promise.”

“Pyro, if he wants to go somewhere else—he’s an adult, he’s been doing so much better these days, I’ve seen him. You can’t keep him here like a bird in a cage if he decides he wants to go somewhere else.”

Pyro groaned aloud, dragging a hand down his face. “For the love of—that’s not what I mean. I swear. I wouldn’t keep him here against his will.”

“But you just said—”

“When he starts talking about ‘leaving’, he doesn’t … he’s not talking about what you think he’s talking about. Some of the words we use are codes.”

That got Miss Pauling’s attention. She paused, processing this, taking in the weary look in Pyro’s eyes. She dropped her voice. “Codes.” He nodded. “So ‘leaving’ is a codeword.”

“Yeah.”

“Code for what?”

Pyro’s gaze cut away. He was a long time in answering, fidgeting with drawstring on his hood instead. “Pauling, you … need to understand that we—Scout and I—we don’t think about death the same way other people do. Nobody that was on the team does. We had respawn. We had respawn for  _years_ , sometimes we died three times a week. Scout … died a lot more often than that.”

“Pyr—”

He put up a hand, silencing her. “Wait. Look. It’s really easy for us to not care about dying. We forget, and then we do really stupid shit because we think we’re still immortal. That’s how Engineer lost his hand, remember? What I mean is—the words ‘death’ and ‘die’ and all of that, they don’t really mean anything to us anymore.” He took a slow, deep breath that sounded like autumn leaves rattling around his ribs. “We forget how serious they are. So we have to use other words to make sure we take them seriously.”

Miss Pauling swallowed, or tried. Her mouth seemed to have gone dry. “… Words like ‘leave,’” she said.

“Yeah,” Pyro answered. “Words like that.”


	24. tar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #22 - "tar" - by Pemm.
> 
> Directly follows [#19 - "briarpatch."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968829)

The words had been tar, stuck in his throat all the next morning. All the next day. Pyro couldn’t choke them out until that night, after Pauling had gone to bed, after he had pushed the memories (heat, power, moaning) as far down as he could. And it was a conversation he couldn’t have in their bedroom, on that mattress. The inevitable fight would wake Pauling up, anyway.

No, it wasn’t just the words. This whole thing was a tar pit, and Pyro had gone and knowingly walked in. Now he was covered with it and it was no one’s fault but his own. He was even sticky, with sweat, though he told himself it was just from pulling up bushes all day. (The rich dirt still smeared across his hands and face did not help to convince him.)

There was Scout sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window, at the setting sun. There was a cup of tea between his hands, long since done steeping, but the string was still curled over its edge. There was silence.

A long time ago Pyro might have beaten around the bush. Waffled. He’d gotten damn tired of that, damn tired of the codewords and doublespeak. So when he finally sat down, two chairs away, and spoke, all he said was, “I slept with Pauling last night.”

Scout’s gaze flickered toward him, lingered barely an instant, and then darted back outside. “I know,” he said. Evenly. Calmly. Like Pyro had noted that night was falling.

It took Pyro a second to come back from that. He’d had half their conversation outlined in his head already, and Scout had gone off-script. “You—you did?”

A sound that Pyro first thought was the wind in the leafless trees outside sighed through the room. He only realized it was Scout when it broke off and he spoke. “She’s got … love bites and bruises all over her shoulders, Pyro.” He was still looking outside. “Couldn’t cover ’em all up, I figure.”

Oh. Well. Fuck.

Pyro shifted in his seat, bowed his head. “It … it was a mistake.” Waited for the other shoe to drop. “I fucked up, I fucked up twice in a row, with you and then with her. I … I feel awful about it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

That. What? No. That wasn’t what Pyro had braced himself for. Pyro had braced himself for … yelling, crying, anger. Emotion. Not this. “Scout, you can be angry with me—”

“Yeah, I know that, but I ain’t, so can you jus’ not be a martyr about it?” All Pyro could detect in his voice was irritation, and even that faded out quickly. “It’s fine. I don’t care.”

“… But, I. Why not?”

Scout shrugged. “She let you do all … that, right?” At last he turned back to Pyro, leaning on his elbows. He looked at him for a long, quiet moment, then rubbed at his eyes. “An’ that’s what you wanted. An’ if you keep wantin’ it then you’re gonna have to keep gettin’ it from her, ’cause I can’t.”

Something icy gripped Pyro’s heart. “Are—” His voice cracked. He stopped, gulped hard. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“Are you?”

“I—no!”

It was dark in the kitchen now. There were no stars. It was black as tar.

Scout looked back out the window. “Then we’re fine, ain’t we?” he said, sinking deeper in his chair. “Do whatever you have to. Nothing’s gotta change.”


	25. woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #23 - "woods" - by PreludeInZ.
> 
> [Inspired by Brawlerina on tumblr.](http://brawlerina.tumblr.com/post/103488090720/miss-pauling-burying-bodies-work-in)

Half the reason she’d bought the property was because it was in the middle of nowhere. It was quiet. It was private. There was no gunfire. There was a forest full of cute, fluffy animals. Probably, anyway, Pauling didn’t really have the time to go wandering around the forest, but Scout and Pyro were constantly bombing around the woods. They always thought it was important to tell her when they’d seen a deer or a rabbit or a particularly interesting bird. The forest was protected, she’d made sure of that when she’d bought the property. She’d heard enough gunfire for a lifetime.

There’d been a gunshot, early one morning. It had been months since any of them had heard a gunshot. The loudest thing that happened was a thunderstorm, now and again. Scout didn’t mind thunderstorms, liked to sit on the porch with Pyro and listen. Gunshots, though. A single, distant gunshot at four in the morning had given him a panic attack. He’d been doing so well, seeing him shaking and sobbing and clinging to Pyro had made Pauling just shake with rage.

And poaching was illegal.

She’d made sure that Pyro had Scout well in hand, and then had walked straight out the back door from the kitchen, pausing only to detatch Pyro’s axe from the stump where it had been lodged. He cut a lot of firewood, but they were well supplied for the evening. He likely wouldn’t miss it.

She went for a walk in the woods.

Pauling came back at sundown. She stopped off in the barn, then returned Pyro’s axe, surgically clean, and wickedly, newly sharp. She needed a shower. Once she’d stripped off her clothes and wrapped up modestly in a towel, she caught Pyro on his way downstairs. “I think a bonfire would be nice, tonight. These got covered in poison ivy. Burn them for me?”

Pyro took her handful of bloodied clothes, wordlessly nodding. He made a point not to mention any of this to Scout, as over the sounds of the shower, he heard Pauling singing the theme from _Peter and the Wolf_ , cheerfully, to herself. 


	26. lipizzaner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #24 - "lipizzaner" - by Pemm.

Once, ages back, tipsy and talking and pretending they weren’t making passes at one another, Pyro had asked Scout what animal he would be, if he could be one. A lion, obviously, Scout had said. Pyro had snorted, and then asked what he thought Pyro would be. Scout thought about that a little longer, and said, pleased with himself for remembering the name, “A Lipizzaner.”

“A what?”

“S’a kind’a horse. Real pretty white horses, real big’n strong’n that. They do fancy shows with ’em and all, I dated a girl that used to ride ’em.”

Pyro had laughed and Scout gave him a lascivious sort of look and said something else about him being a horse that wound up with them both useless and sore and sticky the next morning. Lipizzaners became an inside joke.

The girl Scout had dated—Elizabeth, was her name—the thing was, she had about a million and one stories about those horses. Not all of them were pretty. One of things she’d told him about was the time she’d had to work with one that was a perfect specimen of a horse, intelligent and elegant and a dream to ride, except he spooked at nothing, often badly. They’d had to put the horse down after it ran straight through a fence and broke two of its legs.

Scout thought about that story more often these days.

 

* * *

 

The thing about Pyro’s damn hallucinations was how infrequent they were. The rages happened a few times a month, the crying fits less. His Wonderland spats showed up only two or three times a year, long enough between each that Scout always had trouble finding his bearings when he had to deal with one.

So when Pyro bodily leapt sideways one muggy autumn day with a muffled yelp, it took Scout much too long to remember what to do. Put down what he was holding, look around slowly and carefully.

By then Pyro looked like he was thirty seconds off bolting into the woods. He was grinding his teeth, shifting his weight, backing up. His eyes were fixed on something just beyond Scout, but there was nothing there. “Hey,” Scout called in a low, even voice. “Pyro. Hey. You hear me?”

His gaze flickered to Scout for a fraction of a second. His pupils were blown out entirely. Scout took a careful step forward, and Pyro scrambled backwards. “Okay, okay,” Scout said, going still. “Pyro. Uh, Noah.” Pyro looked at him again. “Hey, you’re okay. Lookit me, alright? I think you’re seein’ things, is there somethin’ behind me?”

He got a quick, tight nod. Pyro’s jaws were clamped shut, he probably wouldn’t be able to speak for the rest of the day after this. Scout took a slow, deep breath and really, really wished Pyro didn’t have the woods to his back. “Okay. There ain’t nothin’ there, Pyro, alright? You’re seein’ things again, there’s nothin’ there, everything’s fine. I need you to stay where you are, got me?”

Pyro made a noise that was almost a word, garbled. His hands shook. Scout risked another step forward. “Pyro—”

In the distance a door slammed. Miss Pauling, Scout thought, back at the house. It may as well have been a gunshot. Pyro whirled on his heel, stumbled in the wet grass, and bolted for the woods.

 

* * *

 

It was dark before they found Pyro, semi-conscious against a tree with what looked like a twisted ankle. He’d lost his sweatshirt somewhere and his pale skin was an angry red. Scout heaved a huge sigh of relief and fought down the paranoia that had been eating at him for hours, and between himself and Miss Pauling they got Pyro home.

By the time they got him inside and into the bathtub, Pyro had mostly roused—for better or worse. He gave single-syllable answers to every question if he answered at all, didn’t want to take the aspirin they gave him, and wouldn’t make eye contact. “S’pretty typical,” Scout told Miss Pauling when she asked, as he sponged cool water over the burns while Pyro shivered in the tub. “I think you were up over in town last time he had one’a these, an’ anyway I got hold of him before he could run so it weren’t nothin’. Do we got any ice cream? If you put the pills in ice cream he’ll eat ’em.”

They didn’t, but they had pound cake left over from Scout’s birthday the week before, and Pyro wolfed that down without hesitation. They iced his ankle and carted him off to bed, and when Scout kissed Miss Pauling’s cheek and thanked her and asked if maybe he and Pyro could be alone for a bit, she let them be.

That helped, just a little. Both of them were irrational in about half the things they did, and for all that Pyro trusted Pauling it was only when she left that he finally managed to speak. “’M s’rry.”

Scout paused, then shook his head and slathered more aloe vera onto Pyro’s cheek. “It ain’t your fault, asshole. You just got spooked.”

Pyro mumbled something unintelligible and sunk deeper into the pillows, but he tangled his scalded fingers into the edge of Scout’s shirt and didn’t let go. Scout glanced down at his hand, and smiled a little.

“Yeah, I love you too.”


	27. Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #25 - "Fuck." - by PreludeInZ.
> 
> Directly follows [#17 - "chiaroscuro."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968763)

Scout hadn’t actually been able to have the conversation with her, he’d just stumbled out of the house, down the slight slope of the hill behind it, and tripped, scraping his palms. Pyro hadn’t noticed him approaching until he was already on his knees, trying to figure out how to cling to the dirt and grass beneath his fingers and not just fly apart and dissolve upward into thin air and disembodied panic. There was an audible sigh, and the familiar feeling of being hauled halfway to his feet, and led the rest of the way to somewhere he could sit.

Pyro had been splitting wood, stacking it outside a shed behind the house. Pyro was ridiculously strong. Stronger than Scout by a long shot, especially these days. Scout had used to be at least a match for him, by merit of speed and agility, but these days his edge was crumbled to rust. There was a point in time when Scout would have cheerfully watched Pyro, his sweatshirt discarded now that the sun was on its way down, swinging an axe and looking good doing it. Pyro did things with an axe that Scout hadn’t known were sexual until he’d seen Pyro doing them.

Not now, though. God, that was the last place his brain could go. Now it was all he could do to stay seated, on a long, semi-cylinder of a log beside the chopping block. His head was still clouded and he felt sick and exhausted and dizzy. He still had a hand clenched around the inside of his elbow, like that would do any good after the fact. He didn’t sleep. Didn’t sleep, not like that, hadn’t slept for more than a couple hours at the absolute most, not in years. Couldn’t bear to lose time any more, how many hours, days, weeks of his life he’d spent, under anaesthetic or non-existent in the pure white void of respawn. He wondered if he counted as older or younger than he really was.

If it had helped that might have been one thing, but of course it hadn’t. He felt worse. Possibly worse than ever, because he’d been talked into trusting Miss Pauling, and it had been a big, big mistake.

“I think we gotta kill her,” he managed, finally, his voice shaking. “Or we gotta go.”

The hand Scout hadn’t noticed rubbing up and down his back stopped, freezing on the back of his neck. “ _Jesus_. Scout, for fuck’s _sake_.”

“Sh-she...fuck. Oh, fuck, Pyro. I can’t...w-why. Why the hell would sh-she...I always thought…”

“She was just trying to _help_.”

Scout shook his head ferociously, and regretted it, it made him want to throw up. “I can’t, I can’t stay. I gotta leave, we gotta go. This was the stupidest fuckin’ idea, she _works_ for him. She told him where I _am,_ she’s _worse_. Oh god. Oh _god_ I wanna go home.”

Pyro sighed, and Scout couldn’t help hearing the exasperation instead of the empathy. “You didn’t want to go home. Medic’s gone, Scout. Europe somewhere. He’s not coming back, do you think I’d let him near you if he did? Do you think he could get within a mile of either of us before I’d bury an axe in his skull? There’s nothing stopping that anymore. He’s not immortal, he’s not god. And do you think Miss Pauling _would_ ? Do you really think that about her? She doesn’t work for anyone anymore, and even if she _did._ Scout, she’s really worried about you. Do you remember what happened? In the kitchen?”

He didn’t. Not really. Sometimes things didn’t stick in his brain, not in the right order. He had memories like old magnets, they just didn’t hold on any longer. He remembered the light in the kitchen, the way it smelled like dust, dry, musty. Not bad. There were smells he couldn’t cope with. The iron scent of blood made him feel cold all over, the way sometimes rotting flowers could smell like chloroform, sickly and sweet sent his vision seeping away from him, just out of habit. He remembered the name of the part he thought he needed, for underneath the sink. He remembered Miss Pauling laughing--it had been light, pleasant, a little nervous. She had such a pretty laugh, he'd used to love to make her laugh. Now the memory of it kept repeating, demented and sinister. “She fuckin’ got me with a _needle_ , an’ I dropped outta the world for half a fuckin’ day. I don’t know what she fuckin’ did to me, if _you_ hadn’t been here...Jesus Christ. What the fuck else do I need t’remember?”

Pyro had been half-crouched behind him, one strong, steadying hand on his shoulder, the other rubbing his back. Now he came and sat on the log beside him. Scout was pulled into a hug he probably needed, but didn't really want. He shuddered bodily. “You know you’re paranoid.”

“Oh, for _chrissakes_ …” Scout buried the heels of his hands in his eyes, then remembered about the inside of his elbow, and hastily covered it up again. What fucking good did that do.

“No, I mean it. Scout, I’m not trying to be cruel, I’m trying to be realistic. You are really, really paranoid. It’s not your fault. Not any more than it’s my fault that occasionally I see horrors and monsters and non-Euclidean geometry, and sometimes the only thing in the world that makes sense is starting a fire. Do you remember anything about what Pauling did?”

Scout moved his hand from his arm, pointed at the spot where she’d jabbed him, didn’t say a word. Just glared.

Pyro tightened the hold of his arm over Scout’s shoulders. “It was the other arm, you poor dumb bastard. Because I _was_ there. And you were fucking _gone_ , Scout. The way you get when you’ve been running on fumes for the last twelve of thirty-six hours without sleeping, and you’re blacking out in restaurants and going blind every couple of minutes and cracking your head on the tile in the showers so Demo finds you fucking hypothermic an hour later and drags you off to Medic. The way you get when I can’t leave you alone. And I left you with Miss Pauling.”

There weren’t any powerlines. The electrical to the farmhouse ran underground, along the long driveway. Scout had walked the length of it, while the other two slept, because he was curious about where the power for the house came from. It wasn’t from powerlines. He wished there were powerlines around to explain the throbbing, staticky buzz in his head.

“Scout, I give you shit about having a crush on her, because I like men and I like women, and I’ve fucked _you_ enough times to very, very much doubt that you’re straight. But you _love_ Miss Pauling. I think you love the idea of her, because she is a pretty impressive little woman. But you don’t know the first thing about her. Because you’ve never seen her cry, and you’ve never seen her really, really mad. _Scary_ mad. _You_ made her cry. I made her mad.”

He was trying really hard to listen. Scout hated almost every word he was hearing, but it seemed desperately important, and if he tried really hard, he could force his thoughts above the static.

Pyro sighed, rested his head on Scout’s shoulder. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that Pyro was shorter than he was. “Scout, she knows you’re dying. I didn’t know you were dying, but I think she’s right. You don’t reset at the end of the day anymore, and if we don’t do something to start fixing you, you’re just going to burn away to nothing. I couldn’t stand that, I’d never forgive myself, but I don’t know how to help you anymore. She’s furious with me for not taking better care of you, and she’s right to be. I’ve been looking at you like this for five years, and I forget that you weren’t always this way. She remembers you and she remembers me and we turned up at her home in all our fucked up, co-dependent glory, and broke her fucking heart. Scout, she has no idea what happened, but thinks she could’ve done something. She _blames herself_.”

That cut through the warm, sticky white noise in his brain like a scalpel, shocked him out of terror and resentment and distrust and back into the long ago reality where a little part of him was kind of in love with Miss Pauling. “Wh...what? No. She...just...no? Why? How the hell...she couldn’t have...I wouldn’ta let her get involved, would’ve kept her as far the fuck away as I could, if she’d _ever_ found out, I…” He didn’t know what he could’ve done. Probably the thing he’d always been too much of a coward to do, the thing with the bullet and the middle of nowhere and the vultures. “I’d...fuck. Guess I’d have put a stop to it. Really. Made it him or me, in a permanent kinda way.”

Pyro was quiet for a long time. Scout realized there were tears on his face, of the quiet, awful, despairing kind. Noah. Noah didn’t come out very often, and less and less lately. Awkwardly, Scout shifted, tried to remember what his job had been when Pyro got like this. Hesitantly, he patted him on the head. That seemed stupid. “I think she’d have stopped it before you’d needed to. I think she’d have hauled him out to the desert and put a full clip of ammo in his skull. I think she’d have buried him like eight feet deep in a dozen different places and ended it. We shut everybody out. It was the stupidest fucking thing we could’ve done,” Noah mumbled, finally.

No more powerlines. No more light. The sun was gone, and they were sitting together in the dark. Nothing more to say. A long time ago, Scout hadn’t been able to stand silences. He couldn’t stand this one. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Scout didn’t know what to say. Miss Pauling. Miss Pauling fixed problems, That was Miss Pauling’s job. If there was a problem, Miss Pauling _did_ something about it, whatever it was. A long, long time ago, they’d made a mistake. And he’d made her _cry_ . Miss Pauling didn’t cry. It didn’t compute. “We gotta...shit. Fuck. She just...how fucked up we are, the both of us. She _knew_ that. You flipped your shit at her, flipped a fuckin’ table over, nearly tore _my_ head off, an’ all she did was ask about your sister. She asked about my ma, an’ I cried like a goddamned beaten child. An’ she drove her truck for fuckin’ twelve hours today, an’ babysat my stupid carcass and this is her _house_ . Oh, man. Mother’a Jesus fucking Christ. Pyro, we are such a  _stupid_ pair of utter an' total  _fucks_.”

Beside him, Pyro sniffled, laughed. “Yeah. No, yeah, we really are. She doesn’t deserve the pair of us. But we don’t have anywhere else to go. We’d better try to quit fucking up.”

“Shit, that’s maybe the least of what we gotta do.” Scout glanced over his shoulder, back up at the house. It was a good house. Good bones. “Well. You paint, right? Bust out the goddamn brushes, I'll try'n remember how to do the plumbin' for a sink. We better fix her house for her.”

There were crickets. There was starlight. There was the house behind them, and there were the two of them. And there was the third that they hadn’t known they needed, this whole time.

Maybe, improbably, it would somehow be all right.

 


	28. this position

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly follows #20 - "need."
> 
> The next arc occurs in chronological order.

He'd jerked his hand back almost immediately, like the softness of the skin taut above her collarbone had burned his fingertips. Spooked. Pauling sat, patiently, waited to let him sort out his reaction.

"...you're such a hell of a lot different than I ever knew you were," Scout said, finally, exhaling slowly. Not quite a sigh.

"Well, I don't know when you would've found out. We were never in a position to...umm. Be in this position." She smiled, hoping to relieve the tension, the pressure, just slightly. "I didn't mean to rush you. Just, you know, so you knew it was okay. If you wanted."

A long, anxious pause. "I ain't sure I do. Want. Uh. I mean, I know I probably asked you out about a million times, but I never knew what I'd've done if you'd said yes. Was kinda counting on it that you wouldn't."

She nodded, shifted her nightdress up so it sat demurely on her shoulders again. "Because of Pyro."

"Mostly." His shoulders dropped slightly, the whole of him seemed to sag. Pauling realized she probably shouldn't have mentioned Pyro. "Him an' me are just so fucked up. Weren't always."

She lay back, patted the bed next to her. "Well. We can talk about that. You and me, we don't ever really talk. I'd like to talk with you."

Scout bit his lip, looked at her a little warily. "You kinda slept with my boyfriend."

"Yes. I do that. I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to hurt you, for whatever that's worth. He seemed like he needed me. I slept with Bidwell for six years, he had a wife the whole time. One time we had a threesome with Reddy." She made a face. "I don't think any of us enjoyed it and I think technically it didn't count, because they would barely look at each other, and neither of them did a damn thing for me."

His eyes widened at this, hesitantly he leaned back beside her. "Okay. Uh. Wow. Okay. Maybe we gotta couple things we could talk about, then."


	29. welcome

Miss Pauling was more than he’d imagined, and Scout had always had a good imagination. She was soft and smaller than him in ways Pyro could not be, in ways he had forgotten people could be. He liked that. He liked the contrast of her hair against her skin, the sound of her voice, how talking to her made him feel like himself again, his old self, sometimes. Liked how she took the reins in every situation but never choked him with them. Liked her in all the ways you could, probably, and a guilty part of him liked her—right now, at least—better than it liked Pyro. Miss Pauling was dangerous and scary and could kill you with a thumbtack, but Scout could have caught both her wrists in one hand and held them there. He’d forgotten what it was like to be the stronger one.

He thought about this for an hour. He was still thinking about it when in his arms Miss Pauling stirred and stretched and said, “Scout?”

“Mm.”

“You haven’t slept at all, have you?”

It was hard not to crack a sheepish grin in the darkness. “Sure I did. Like, five whole minutes.”

She sighed. It was a light kind of sigh, a “what am I going to do with you” sigh. “I guess it was vain to think you might fall asleep with just me.”

“Aw, it ain’t … it ain’t like that.”

“Yes it is,” she said, shifting to roll onto her back. She looked at him in the half-dark, no glasses, hair down, as pretty as he’d always known she would be. After a few seconds, she reached up and cupped his cheek. “It’s okay, I mean. I know I’m not him. I’m not trying to replace him.” She hesitated. “I know I can’t anyway, for either of you. I—I don’t know what I’m trying to do, honestly.”

Neither did Scout. “It was, um. Was real nice’a you. Gettin’ me outta the hall, there, an’ everything.” He cleared his throat. “Talkin‘, an’ this. Thanks. Was real sweet. Thank you.”

She was quiet for a few seconds, and Scout wondered with growing discomfort if he’d said the wrong thing. But then she gave a soft, breathy kind of laugh, and leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You’re welcome. You’re always welcome.”

Maybe it was the way she’d said it. Maybe it was just the strangeness of the situation, or the stress and resignation that had been eating him all week, or how good Pauling smelled. But either way he watched her after she said that, just for a few seconds, before he leaned in a little and returned the gesture, aimed just a bit more center than hers had been.

Her lips were softer than Pyro’s, too.


	30. rules (1)

The boys weren’t going to give her a break, were they. Well. That was fine. She had sort of opened this can of worms anyway.

The very next night Pyro had come tapping on her door, sheepish-looking, and said Scout had headed outside about half an hour ago and woken Pyro up when he left and now he couldn’t sleep, and, um, had he woken Pauling? Was she busy? It was only about eleven, but he’d fuck right back off to his room if she wanted him to …

Pauling had rolled her eyes and pulled him inside, shutting the door behind him.

There was a marked difference tonight. The Pyro that ran his hands over her now—Noah, she reminded herself, he’d asked her to call him Noah—his was not the hesitant touch of a man unconvinced he was not doing wrong. Now he was firmer, pushed, took without asking. It made Pauling’s heart race in all the best ways, but very soon she realized he was like an untamed stallion: enticing with his wildness and strength, but not to be trusted. “Hhkkk—Noah—Noah, stop—”

She had to twist her head and bite his arm before he would let her up from the mattress. Now he blinked at her, looking a weird mix of annoyed and worried. “Too much at once,” she told him through huge gasps. “If we’re going to do this we need to lay down some rules.”

“Rules?”

Oh boy. He wasn’t a stallion, he was a colt. They had work to do.


	31. irregular arcs

He didn’t miss Pyro. And, beyond that, Scout didn’t find himself blaming him in the slightest, because Miss Pauling was amazing. He’d always said she was amazing.

She was fun, unexpectedly funny in the bedroom. She laughed a lot, quiet and tender, liked to touch and be touched, loved to be held. Didn’t mind that he was tentative, remembering about girls and how they were nice and how they worked. She was never impatient or hasty herself, just simply, kindly affectionate.

It put a damper on things, when, sat facing each other on her bed, she had him undo the top few buttons of her nightshirt. The neckline parted to reveal the delicate angles of her collarbone, and was just sliding open down her shoulders, beginning to tease out the existence of small, elegant breasts. Except.

Scout went cold all over, recognizing a mark on her shoulder, two irregular arcs of bruising, mirrored. “Oh, Jesus, he bit you. That son of a bitch, he…”

Miss Pauling put a hand on the side of his face immediately, cradling his jaw, pressing her thumb against his lips. “Shh. It’s okay. Just bruises. He didn’t do anything I wasn’t willing to let him do. Scout, it’s really all right.”

“You can’t let him hurt you insteada me, it ain’t right, that ain’t what I wanted. I didn’t think he’d do it to you, I thought it was just a thing he did t-to. To me.  He shouldn’t be hurting anybody that is fucked up and wrong.”

She took both his hands now, and her voice took on a firmness, conviction. “It’s fine. It’s just a little pain, he doesn’t really do me any harm. I like it. If it were something you wanted to try…” She let the suggestion dangle, not presuming anything.

Scout swallowed. Miss Pauling had convinced him to take his shirt off, and he felt cold, exposed. “I…no. No, Jesus. I couldn’t. Oh, god. Don’t fuck him again. He could go the hell off, right in the middle of everything, he could really hurt you. I’m sorry. I gotta go. Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

“No,” she had her hands on his thighs now, as he’d started to rise. Just lightly, no hint of pressure or restraint, but he found himself stopping. “Scout, you aren’t listening. I’m all right. He hasn’t hurt me. He’s learning to get permission. He isn’t used to wanting this from people, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’m trying to help.”

He shook his head, pulled her night shirt back up over her shoulders, found his hands lingering, protectively. “I can’t let him…not to you. He hurt you. I ain’t supposed to let him.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said, gently. “I chose this. This isn’t about him being angry. It’s about him controlling what he does when he gets angry. It’s about learning how to stop when you aren’t all the way in control. Don’t you think that would help him?”

“I…w-well. Yeah. No, it’d…I never know how to get him to stop. Not even…not even a sex thing, when he gets mad, I just…I let him burn it all out. He gets mean when he loses his shit, an’ he’s hurt me a couple times, but it was always an accident. He don’t wanna.” Scout paused, uncertain. “Right?”

Miss Pauling took his hands, gently tugged him to lie down beside her on the bed. Nestled close. “It’s not that simple. But come on. Play with my hair, and we’ll talk about it.”

“…okay.” So far, he’d mostly really liked talking to Miss Pauling.


	32. therapist

“Are you okay?”

It wasn’t a question Pauling typically asked when she was stripped bare and feeling sore and tender and a little shaken, feeling the bruises start to color on her shoulders and legs. Then again, she wasn’t typically such next to a gloriously naked specimen like Noah. Noah, who was finger-combing her hair in utter silence. He’d barely spoken all evening. “Noah?” Pauling tried again.

“Nnm?”

And she’d thought she was out of it. She reached out, one hand still wavering a little, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. It took a while for him to look at her, and for one panicked moment she wondered if he hadn’t dropped into one of his fits that Scout had warned her about. Did he ever do that after sex? She didn’t want to deal with that. “You seem out of it,” was all she said, watching him closely.

“Oh,” he said, blinking hard. “Oh, um. Just. Scout.”

Of course. “What about Scout?”

“He’s … I don’t know, it feels like we haven’t been talking very much?” He grimaced, glancing down. Slid his hand down Pauling’s side until it rested on her hip. “I mean, he doesn’t seem … unhappy or bad off or anything. It’s—he’s actually talking more,” he said, like it was just now dawning on him. “Enough I’m not getting a lot in edgewise. Fuck. The last time he did this he was—” Noah broke off sharply, glanced at her, glanced away.

Pauling didn’t bother to disguise her sigh. They wouldn’t tell her anything. “Noah—”

“Has he said anything to you?” Noah interrupted, pushing himself up on his elbows. “Anything … weird, I mean. Jesus. I know he’s mad about the bruises but I thought I’d explained it … Jesus. I’m such a shitty boyfriend.”

Pauling had not signed up to be the boys’ therapist. But here she was, wasn’t she. “I think he’s fine. Really,” she added as he furrowed that gorgeous brow and dropped back down sideways to the mattress. She watched him for a quiet moment before sitting up and taking hold of his shoulder, rolling him over so he was on his back and she was bent over him. “He used to talk like that when I met him. All the time, about everything. I thought it meant he was feeling better, that he was doing it again.”

Noah gave her a doubtful look and opened his mouth. She pressed a finger to his lips. “No, shh. Scout’s fine. I really think that.”

“But …”

“Noah. He’s okay right now. Okay? Now stop worrying or I’m going to have to put my clothes back on just to go check on him with you, and neither of us wants that.”


	33. throat

“Put your hands on my throat.”

They were shaking, when Scout did. Pauling hoped she wasn’t pushing him too hard, she didn’t want to scare him, but she felt it would help him understand. About Pyro. Noah. His hands were warm, damp. Nervous. Her shoulders were bare, her torso stretched back. She’d tilted her head up, exposing her neck as she nestled back amidst the pillows.

“Okay.” He was incredibly shy, touching her only the barest amount, fingertips tracing the dark marks left by Pyro’s hands “Jesus. Oh, god.”

She paused. Put a hand reassuringly on his. “I’m all right. Are you all right? We can stop any time. I just thought it might help you understand.”

“I wanna try. I-if you’re okay.” He laughed, a little high, nervous. “Jesus.”

“Okay. You can put some pressure on, then. Even pressure. Don’t press to hard with your thumbs, you’re not trying for bruises. You have to be careful with bruises on the throat. It can be rude and dangerous.”

“R-right. Right. Okay.” His grip tightened ever so slightly. “You say if this ain’t all right, okay. O-or tap me or something, I don’t wanna go too far. Promise? Okay?”

“Yes, I promise.”

“Okay.”

She’d barely begun to feel it, when he gave up. Hadn’t even been enough to feel the ache of the bruises Noah had left, before he’d known better. Scout couldn’t push past the fear of hurting her, and she sat up as he recoiled backwards, wrapping his arms around his torso and pulling away from her, breath hissing out of him in panicky gasps.

“Hey,” she said softly, reaching out. She moved closer, tugged his hands free, climbed into his lap and made him hold her. “Shhh. Shh. It’s all right. I’m fine. You were all right, we’re okay. All right? It’s okay.” Kissed his cheekbones, his nose, lips and jaw.


	34. falconry

She couldn’t sleep, and so carefully and with great precision Pauling had pried Scout away from Pyro and toted him off to her room. It was getting to be routine, and Pauling liked it, liked falling asleep in someone’s arms. She liked to think Scout liked it, too.

Sleep, though, didn’t come. They curled up on her bed, and Scout told her about the hawk he had seen on the barn roof that day. Pauling’s grandfather had been a falconer before she was born, and had photos of his kestrel all over the house. Scout had heard Sniper talk about falconry once. And on they went, talking in soft tones, never really getting drowsy. Three, three and a half hours passed. Pauling did not sleep, and of course neither did Scout. By the time the sun had begun to rise they had foregone conversation in favor of kissing, touching, legs tangling.

She was lying on his bare chest when it happened: “Hey, uh,” Scout started, and his fingers were caught up in the neckline of her nightgown. He wet his lips and tugged it sideways, just a little, and put his wrapped hand on her exposed collarbone. His other hand rubbed small circles against her hip. “Do you—I mean, s’fine if you don’t but d’you want to …”

In the growing light she could see him swallow and wet his lips. The hand on her hip bunched up the fabric of her nightgown, pulling it up enough to expose her skin, and then his fingers slipped under the side of her underwear. “You want me to help you take these off?”


	35. knots like that

He lacked any sense of subtlety. He was all brute force, all unbridled and raw.

And that was fine. It was wild and exciting and exhausting. But. It was getting a little tedious. Oh, on the scale of things that were tedious, it ranked above laundry and dishes. Ranked above most of her household chores. But she’d been getting fucked by Noah for nearly a week now, and while that was amazing and thorough and not unsatisfactory, it wasn’t quite…Well. Scout was still on the back burner at a gentle, slow simmer and she adored that, it did wonders for both of them. But she was fairly sure she was a long way away from really fucking him. Noah, though. He could stand up to a good hard fucking.

“Can you still move your fingers? Let me see,” she requested, brusque.

His hands were above his head, where they wouldn’t be in the way. He looked–more than just looked–exposed. Vulnerable. Excited, though. “Uh huh. Uh. Hnn. Yeah. You, um. Where’d you learn to tie knots like that?”

She had found an old riding crop in the barn. She had washed it, looked it over, then spent an hour oiling and reconditioning the leather. Pauling wasn’t even sure she would hit him with it. It was just nice to have. She smiled, teased it across his collarbone. Knelt on the bed, swung a leg over his hips. “I grew up on a farm.”


	36. seniors in theater

“Yeah, I mean—I only did it the one time with more than one person. They were seniors in theater and I was a freshman, and we were all a little drunk and one thing led to another … I don’t remember if I ever told Scout about it. I don’t think I did. It never came up.”

Noah said it in a groggy voice, laid out on his stomach flat on the bed. His eyes were shut, his arms stretched out in front of him, tied still to the headboard, slackened now. Pauling pulled the cold washcloth away from one of the vivid red spots on his back. The riding crop had come in handy after all. “Did you like it?”

“I, well.” Noah hesitated. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. Ow—careful …”


	37. might've

“Yeah…but…Bidwell, though.”

Miss Pauling groaned, buried her face in the curve of his shoulder. “Stop giving me shit about Bidwell. It wasn’t…it wasn’t a thing. It was just a habit. He was down from corporate twice a week, it was like a standing appointment.”

Scout was quiet, made a little trepidatious by her irritation. “…you…did you love him?”

Her sudden silence was worse, the way she tried to turn her face away. “No. That was never part of it. He might’ve loved me, but he wasn’t supposed to. He had a wife. I’m not sure they loved each other. That was maybe the only reason I…oh. I don’t know, Scout. I really don’t know.”

Now she turned inward again, tried to curl up closer against him. He kissed her hair and held her, and hoped they weren’t making the same mistake.


	38. weighed just about nothing

Against the _wall_. Bidwell had _never_ …he was a pencil pusher. The closest thing he’d done to this had been doing her taxes, one year. And she’d needed to go back over them with a fine toothed comb, just to be sure.

Noah, though. Oh god, Noah. He lifted her like she weighed just about nothing, braced her back against the wall. This was the right way, the best way for him to be powerful, in control of her.

And there. _There_. And _then._


	39. chatter

It made sense that one of the first things that came back to Scout was his mouth. He chattered now, was starting to remember how to ramble and chase his thoughts. Pauling had expected that.

Pauling had for some reason not expected the other things he could do with that mouth, not until he one evening gently pressed her legs apart and showed her. Showed her for nearly half an hour. Oh, God, she hadn’t expected that.


	40. rules (2)

Scout and Pyro hadn’t woken up in the same bed together in over a week. Gone to bed together, a few times, sure, but in the morning one of them would always be gone. It had spooked the hell out of Scout the first few times—lessened when he realized he could hear them across the hall.

Sometimes they would see each other at breakfast, sometimes not until later. And it occurred to Scout he’d been enjoying it, not being at Pyro’s side twenty-four/seven. Between that freedom and the talks he’d been having with Miss Pauling—and other things—it was just nice. There’d been a time when he would have killed to be off on his own whenever he wanted, before RED and before Medic. He’d forgotten that about himself.

But when he made his way into the kitchen that next Saturday morning, five or six in the morning, before everyone else, Pyro was sitting at the table. He had a mug of that junked-up coffee he liked in front of him, maybe two-thirds gone, probably cold if the way he was staring off into the middle distance was any indication. Scout let himself make a little more noise as he limped in than usual.

That roused him. Pyro stirred, peering over his shoulder. The sun was only just coming up, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. There were bright red marks on his freckled back and light bruises around his wrists that made Scout have to stop and brace himself, but when he turned he smiled in a way that hid no suffering. Scout would know. “Hey.”

“Hey. You’re up damn early.”

“Guess so. There’s coffee in the thing if you want.”

Scout shook his head, instead sitting down across from him. Pyro leaned his chin in one hand. “Sleep okay?”

“More or less,” he said, which was an improvement over the sarcastic laugh he would have answered with a month ago. “Are you, uhh.” Scout chewed his lip. “I’m tryin’ not to flip out over you lookin’ all beat up and I think I’m doin’ a damn good job.”

Pyro snorted, soft, the way he did. He glanced down at himself. “I’m glad you’re trying. Thank you,” he said, unexpectedly softly. “You seem like you’re doing lots better. In general, I mean.”

“I guess maybe.” Scout crossed his arms on the table in front of him and leaned his head on them. “I been … talking with Miss Pauling a lot. S’been good.”

“Just talking … ?”

Scout squirmed. “More than talkin’. What,” he added, lifting both eyebrows, “you jealous?”

Pyro rolled his eyes. “No. You know that. I’m just glad to see you happy.” He exhaled, looking down into his cup. “Or at least happi _er_. ’M just sorry it took so long.”

“Yeah, well, it … turned out to be a real complicated solution, didn’t it? I mean I wouldn’t’a figured it out.” Scout wet his lips, drummed his fingers on the table, fidgeted. Felt like he was shaking something off. “So uh. Are, are we ever gonna, like, start screwin’ again? ‘Cuz like, I—I _know_ Miss Pauling don’t know about half the things you like. Used t’like.“ He glanced sideways. ”I miss doin’ those. I dunno what we’re doin’ no more, Pyro, I dunno what the rules are now. Ain’t nobody I ever knew about had nothin’ like this. With three people. I figure we’re breakin’ about fifty different rules here.”

“I still like those things,” Pyro said softly. He reached out across the table, his pale fingers stretching out over Scout’s long tan ones. “I don’t … think there are any rules, though. Or, not that. I think we can make the rules.” He squeezed Scout’s hand, smiled when Scout squeezed back. “I still love you. I’ll always love you. That’s the first one, okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“And I don’t know what any of the other ones are yet. And I’m not going to worry about that until after I drag you back to our room and get you to do that thing with your fingernails. We’ve got plenty of time to figure them out. Okay?”

“Okay,” Scout grinned, lopsided, as he let Pyro draw him up and pull him out of the kitchen.


	41. rolled around again

When Saturday night rolled around again, they would have made for an incredible threesome, if not for Pauling, falling asleep in the middle of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _end of arc_


	42. semantics

“Look, I’m just sayin’. Y’told me a long time ago, your mom an’ dad already wrote you off, but you still got Eleanor, an’ you’re _over it_. An’ that’s great. Used to make me mad as hell, but I’m over it too. Honest. But I am at the end of like eighty generations of Irish Catholic, an’ my ma’s gonna flip out when I see her again. Oughta at least be able to say I got a girlfriend. Might take some of the heat off.”

“ _We_ have a girlfriend.” Pyro was plucking tiny flowers from amid the bright, summer grass. Scout was sprawled on his back, on a picnic blanket, his head in Noah’s lap. Pauling was dozing, curled up with her head on his chest. Delicately, very carefully, as Pyro handed them to him, Scout was weaving flowers into fine plaits in her hair. They were up to a dozen and she hadn’t so much as twitched.

Scout muttered something under his breath. "No. _You_ have a girlfriend. _I_ have a girlfriend."

Noah was partially teasing, but a little bit not. "And you'll just neglect to mention it's the same girlfriend." He reached over to thread a tiny daisy behind Pauling's ear. "Semantics."

"You met many Catholics? Kinda we're big on the fuckin' semantics."

“We could compromise. I have a girlfriend. You have a girlfriend. You’re also going to be riding my gorgeous freckled ass straight to damnation, so. There’s that.”

“Yeah, great, that’s real funny. I ain’t got enough of a cross t’ bear, five years bein’ a crime against nature ain’t caused enough goddamn guilt an’ anguish, I also gotta worry about who I fuck. Christ. Don’t you talk to me about Hell. I’m the only one outta the two of us got even any kind of idea what it’s like. I ain’t ever gonna get to go home. Never mind tell my ma about how I’m fucked up enough that one person ain’t good enough for me.”

Pyro brushed a hand through Scout’s hair, ran a thumb over his brow. “Your mom wouldn’t care. I bet she wouldn’t.”

There was a long, melancholy pause. Scout put an arm around Pauling, hugged her gently. Lifted his other hand to find Pyro’s. “ _Our_ girlfriend is the _least_ fucked up thing, outta the shit I ain’t gonna be able to talk about with my ma.”

There wasn’t really anything Noah could say to that. He plucked another flower, held it in his free hand for a long, long time.


	43. homily

The lady I talked to at church said I should write this down. I missed Communion, I couldn’t stop crying. The Homily was about family, because it’s Thanksgiving, and of course it was. She took me by the arm, we went and sat in the churchyard until I got myself under control. I was so embarrassed. She was so nice.

Her son is dead, she says she writes him a letter every Thanksgiving, and one again at Christmas. She says it helps to put it down in writing, that nothing makes it better, but it gets her through it a little easier. It’s been a almost half a year, and I  _know_  you aren’t dead, but there are some days that I’ll try anything just to get you off my mind.

I think I would know if you were dead. I believe someone somewhere would’ve found a way to tell me. I’m afraid you could be gone and I would just never know it, so I believe that instead.

I called your work. They’re very hard to get a hold of, out west, it just seems like a much ruder part of the country. Not very neighborly. No one knew anything, anyway, just that the company had folded up, and last anyone knew, they’d been trying to help you all transition to new jobs. I hope you would have looked for something close to home, but maybe you have New Mexico in your blood now. At least I hope it’s warmer.

Or maybe you’re back in Boston, and you just don’t want to come home. It’s a big city and I wouldn’t know unless you turned up at some godawful morgue. This is the worst sort of Catholic guilt, baby boy. I don’t care. It’s not like I know where to send this.

All your brothers made it home for dinner. All seven of them, and six wives, and nine grandkids. David told me not to, but I made up your room anyway. His triplets ended up sleeping there, but I suppose it didn’t matter. I can’t remember if you’ve met all the grandkids. Nieces and nephews. The house is still too small, there never was room for all of us. That’s no excuse for you not to come home. We always made it work, somehow. Jeffrey bought cranberry sauce, but no one touched it, because that was always your job. I had to throw it away, all of it, it still had the lines on it from the can. I cried for an hour. Ronny’s oldest girl came and gave me a hug, so of course I had to stop.

None of this would make you come home, it would just make you feel bad. I’m so afraid you feel bad for something, I can’t imagine how bad it would have to be, that you wouldn’t come home. Darling, I’m so afraid for you. I don’t know when I made you think you could do anything I wouldn’t forgive you for. I wish you’d had a kid of your own, I wish you’d gotten some silly girl pregnant, but I know you haven’t. I’m not sure you aren’t dead somewhere, but I know you, and I know you’d have turned up on my doorstep the second you found out you’d gotten some silly girl pregnant. You would have made me help you plan a wedding, find a house, have a wife, have a baby.

Sweetheart, I wish you would find a girl and have a baby. I don’t need any more grandkids, and two of my daughters in law are pregnant again anyway, but I wish you would have a little baby of your own, so you could know how much I miss you. I pray that there’s some girl out there somewhere, someone who’ll pluck you out of the wind and settle you down and knock some sense into you, because I’m too far away and I can’t do it.

This isn’t helping. It’s worse now, and I have to stop. Please, baby, I miss you. Please, please come home. I can’t let any of the boys say your name in the house any more. I can’t say it myself. I tried to write it at the top, but it took ten minutes of trying and I just gave up.

I love you. I miss you. Please, at least you could let me know you’re safe.

Love, even in spite of everything,

Ma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving,
> 
> Love,  
> Pemm & Prelude


	44. don't come back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-epilogue.

Pyro’s head was pounding. His mouth was dry. He supposed it was a kind of sympathy pain. No—phantom pain, pain from something that was no longer there, that was no longer his.

“We should be there with him,” he mumbled, disconsolate. “He’s all by himself. He needs us.”

“No.” A hand on his leg. From the passenger seat, Miss Pauling watched him steadily for a moment’s time before reaching up to take his hand from the steering wheel. Pyro let her, doing nothing to stop the shaky way his breath left him as she did. “Scout’s got to do this on his own. And he knows we’re right here, that we’re just across the street. He’ll be fine, Noah.”

Across the street. Pyro looked out the window again, his teeth worrying his lip to where he could taste copper. Scout was just standing there, all the color stolen out of him by the shade of the old blue house. This was where his mother lived now, if the address Spy had given them a few years back was right. Part of Pyro hoped it wasn’t. Not because he didn’t want Scout to see his mother. Of course not. Pyro was just afraid of what his mother would do.

Pauling wasn’t. “I wish he’d just do it,” she sighed.

As if he had heard her, Scout shook himself and rang the doorbell. Pyro wrapped his fingers tighter around Pauling’s hand.

Ten years ago, when Pyro had been expelled from college, he had returned home with his easels and brushes. He counted that among the bigger mistakes he’d made in his life. If he could do it again he would have fled, found a cheap apartment somewhere, gotten a job. But Pyro had grown up soft, and didn’t know what else to do. His disappointed parents had taken him in and pretended nothing had happened.

Being rich and bored and inclined toward the wilder edges of life made for poor decisions. It only took three months for Pyro to meet Samson, a sly handsome bastard who put his Biblical counterpart to shame as far as Pyro was concerned. It only took another four for Pyro to grow careless.

When his father found out what he had been doing—who he had been seeing—Pyro learned what hate really looked like. He tasted true shame in the disgusted, horrified way his mother stared at him, in how she shoved him away when he stepped too close. He was thrown out of the house in broad daylight with nothing but the clothes on his back and the money in his pocket, and the next day they had burned all his belongings—his books, his journals, his paintings. The pile of ash in the backyard may as well have been a flaming sign: _don’t come back._

Pyro had blazed a trail out of Tennessee—literally, leaving a string of arsons in his wake. He didn’t remember he could have gone to Eleanor until he was halfway to Texas. Instead he had slept with nearly anyone who’d take a ghost-white stranger with ash in his hair into their arms, taken anything anyone would sell him. In retrospect, Pyro thought he was waiting to die. It was a miracle that RED had found him before he did any real damage to himself. Or he’d thought that, at the time. When Scout had finally harassed him into taking off the mask Pyro had marked it as a personal victory against his own poisoned mind. He would not know how literally his mind could be poisoned for another six months.

Back to the present. It seemed like it took just as long for Scout’s mother to open the door.

From where Pyro had parked, they had front-row seats to the silent show. Scout jerked his head up as soon as the handle jostled, and when it opened all the way Pyro found she still looked much the same she had in the photo he had referenced when he’d painted her for Scout one year.

They stared at one another for exactly four seconds, Scout wringing his hat in his hands, his mother completely still. Scout said something. His mother’s hand flew to her mouth, and Scout seemed to shrink in on himself. Pyro’s gut twisted.

But before he could so much as breathe, Scout’s mother had stumbled out onto the front stoop and flung her arms around her son, so tightly it was a wonder he could still move. At first he didn’t. Then, as slowly as if he worried he might break her, Scout returned her embrace, leaning as heavily into her as he ever had to Pyro or Pauling. Probably more.

Something touched Pyro’s hand. He glanced over to find Pauling had pressed it to her mouth, but she was not looking at him. She looked more like she was trying not to cry. “See,” she said softly. “They’ll be fine.”


	45. chicken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly follows [ #07 - "furious"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968421)

She’d only met Gil because she wanted to know about chickens. Mostly they talked about chickens, occasionally the weather. Pauling wasn’t even sure if he actually was a vet, but the sign at the end of his driveway said “Veterinary Services”, he reminded her of her grandfather, and teary and anxious and with one broken headlight that she’d been meaning to fix, she’d driven over to his house to fetch him.

He was a kind old man, and he’d gathered his things, taken the wheel and driven back. He had been graciously, kindly silent while she composed herself enough to tell him what had happened. He had nodded along, gravely. He hadn’t set a word until they’d pulled up the long driveway, and then just, “Show me in.”

The lights were on in the farmhouse. Pyro had gone back to being Noah, and been sensible, and brought Scout inside. Pauling had clumsily offered to help, before she took the truck, but he’d shaken his head. Lifted Scout the same way he lifted her, like he wasn’t a hundred and seventy pounds of dead weight. It would never cease to amaze her how strong Noah was. In another, inverted version of their life, he was probably a firefighter. Inverted-her had probably not given up on that bed and breakfast. Inverted, Scout was probably just the way he’d used to be.

That had been almost twenty minutes ago, and now her tires crunched on the familiar gravel pad, out front of the house. Pauling climbed out of the truck, wiped her eyes again. “Gil,” she said, a little shakily, trying to unruffle herself, “It’s his arm that’s broken. I don’t think there’s anything else, just bruises, maybe he hit his head. But have a look at his leg, his right leg. Don’t...don’t be too obvious about it.”

“Right.”

She fumbled with her keys as he handed them to her, led him up the front path, onto the porch. She bit her lip. “I...I hate to...just. Wait here, please, just for a minute. I don’t want to startle anyone. I’ll be right back, just...sorry. I’m sorry, you can sit down. I’ll be right back.”

It was rude, but Gil had been understanding so far. She was probably going to push his sensibilities a great deal further before this house call was over. She slipped inside.

The lights were on, Noah had built a fire in the fireplace, was tending it, moodily. It was late summer, but the nights could get cold. Thank god they’d been in the barn. Thank god they hadn’t gone to the forest. Scout was on the couch, still mercifully dead to the world. Pauling sat down on the floor beside him, tugged the blanket Noah had dropped over him further up, over his ribs. Sniffled, just a little. “I’m sorry I got so mad,” she murmured, half to both of them.

Noah poked at the log he’d gotten smoldering in the hearth, ferociously. “You were right to. God. He is a self-destructive fucking idiot, but I am worse, because he gets broken and I think that puts him in charge. I can’t cope with it. I go all to fucking pieces, every fucking time. There used to be a solution. There’s not a solution any more.”

His voice was dark, furious. Angrier than she had been, but not the kind of angry he couldn’t control. That was almost worse, to see him choose to be this angry. Noah hated to get angry. Pauling didn’t know what to say. She had never known what to say--never known what had happened to the pair of them--that they got caught in such pyrrhic spirals trying to protect each other. She brushed a hand over Scout’s eyes, with shadowed circles hollowed under them, like she hadn’t seen in months.

He’d finally started sleeping, keeping hours that resembled normalcy. He had bad nights, but they were growing less frequent. It had been a year and a half, and he wasn’t the ghost of himself he had been. But now, just ashen and bruised and broken, with his arm resting across his chest, looking just that little bit wrong. All in all, it could have been a lot worse, but it brought back a lot of heartwrenching memories to see him like this.

Noah, though. Pauling wondered what it had cost him--them--to stay together. He was hunched up, staring into the fire, like he could tune out the rest of what was happening in the room. To only have had each other for so long. Their big, awful secret still lay between them, and while Pauling had suspicions and glimpses and terrible fears, she had no way of really knowing. She knew Scout had been through respawn more times than was the normal, expected minimum. She knew he’d had deaths that weren’t on the books. Pauling had never done it. Was it addictive, somehow? Had it gotten into him, a yawning, aching need to destroy himself, get back to that place between life and death?

It wasn’t a practical consideration. And Gil was on the porch. She licked her lips, pushed herself up on her knees, and kissed Scout, tenderly. Like she wasn’t going to be able to, when he found out what she was taking the blame for. “He’s waiting outside. The...umm. His name is Gil. The vet.”

“The doctor,” Noah’s voice was flat, hostile.

Pauling knew that was a word to avoid. “Well, I’m not sure, actually. I’ve never asked for credentials or anything, but he has horses, he helps me with my chickens. He’s good with his hands.” She hesitated. “Look...if you’re not comfortable with him...with Scout. Like this. I can stay, I’ll help Gil if he needs it.”

Noah didn’t turn from the fireside. “Oh, good. A horse and chicken doctor. I’m staying here. I have to be able to say I watched.”

Jesus. “Okay. All right. I’ll let him in.”

She did. Pauling had always found Gil’s presence to be a calming influence, she had gotten into the habit of inventing questions about her chickens, whenever the boys were getting to be too much and she needed some time on her own. He let her talk, seemed to listen and enjoy her company. Made her coffee. Wasn't a snarly thicket of issues. Was nice.

“H’llo,” he greeted Noah, as he came in the door. Noah had moved to the armchair beside the fireplace, his face stony. He just nodded curtly in response. Gil was taciturn. Hopefully he hadn’t taken it the wrong way. He had crouched down by the couch, set his bag on the ground. Went to work.

\------

Not a bad break, Gil had said. Breaks, technically, both the bones in the forearm, fractured. He had also made it explicitly clear that he could do a closed reduction, but that they really ought to have gone to a hospital hours ago, and without x-rays, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t heal a little funny. That he could make no guarantees about nerve damage, and that Scout really ought to be seen by an actual doctor, when he woke up. Noah had made a bad, cruel joke about broken limbs and horses, and the room had fallen uncomfortably silent.

Gil stayed, after he was finished, after he’d washed the dried plaster of paris from his hands. Noah hadn’t moved from his chair, staring, broody. He hadn’t watched, either. Pauling had managed to insinuate her way onto the couch, so Scout’s head lay in her lap. He had come out of it, briefly, when Gil had gently wrenched the broken bones back into place, had a fit of choking, panicked agony. Pauling had done her best to help, Noah had just clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists, until it was over.

Gil brought them each a cup of tea and went to take care of the morning chores, usually a handful of Scout’s jobs, and to tend to Pauling’s chickens. Noah’s tea went ignored, untouched. Pauling sipped hers gratefully and definitely didn’t cry into it a little, all four fingers of her other hand running in tandem circles on the side of Scout’s neck. Occasionally, just to reassure herself, she lingered a few moments on his slow, steady pulse.

It had been nearly one when she’d gotten back with Gil. Now the grey light of half-dawn was starting to etch shadows over the furniture in the living room, and the fire in the hearth had long since smoldered itself into fitful embers.

“He’s going to backslide like you wouldn't believe.”

Pauling had been trying to work out what to say for the past twenty minutes, she hadn’t expected it would be Noah, who broke his four hour silence. She still didn’t know what to say. “Maybe he won’t.”

“Last time I let you do this, he wanted to kill you. He’s fucked up enough he thought _that_ was a good idea.”

She flared, just slightly. “And the last time I did this, _you_ thought I was going to kill him. _You_ thought I’d rather kill him than try to help him. I know it’s frustrating. I know he has issues, God, more than I ever wanted to know. Neither of you will tell me what happened, that’s fine, I’ve stopped asking. I have my theories. But God _damn it_ , Noah, I love you both. Separate and together. And your contempt for him when he’s like this makes me so mad I could scream.”

He scowled, gripped the arms of his chair. "Give him another few years. See what you're like after you realize there's no fixing him. _You_ don't owe him anything, you can leave his stupid, crippled ass any damn time. Maybe you love him broken, but I loved him whole.”

Pauling flinched. Past tense. “Stop. Just...let’s stop. I’m exhausted. You’re more exhausted. I don’t know when Scout’ll come around, I gave him a dose I’d worked out for _you_ , but it might be soon. Drink your tea, you sat in a barn for eight hours. How long since either of you have eaten? God. God damn it.”

“Yeah.”

The next sound to break the silence, an hour later, was a shuddering whimper from Scout. Pauling shifted, took his hand, touched his face. “Hey. Hey...oh, honey. Shh, you’re all right. We’re all here, Scout, you’re okay.” Gently, kindly, squeezing his fingers when they twitched, flexed against her own.

“Are we letting him blame you for this?” Noah asked, abruptly. He stood up. “He’s going to pitch a fit. Have we decided it’s your fault, or is it my turn? I don’t think you’d know how to talk him down from being mad at _me_.”

Pauling looked up, bit her lip. “W-well. Yes. I mean...all right. I did say. J-just...oh, god. You both scared me so badly, I just wanted to help. I only wanted to do what you’d need. I wish...I wish you two could trust me. I wouldn’t ever hurt you. After everything, I thought…”

Scout twisted on the couch, groaned. Blinked, eyes unfocused, confused. Pulled away from Pauling’s hand, tried to sit up.

“Move,” Noah said, and as Pauling stood, he caught Scout’s shoulders and sat down in her place. “Shh. Scout? You hearing me? You okay?”

Irritable, groggy. Awkwardly trying to move his arm, heavy and bound in plaster. “Nhhn, no. _Fuck_ . Oww. Oh…f-fuck. Fucking... _ow_ ...Pyro? Pyro. N-not...not...Mm...? No, _not_ . Wh-where...no...god. Help. I c-can’t... _can’t_...help.” Dissolving into panic, clinging and frenetic, breathing too fast.

“You’d better go,” Noah said, quiet, grim. Pulling Scout closer, the way Pauling had found herself wanting to do, from the very first day they had arrived. Shutting him off from her. The sun was rising properly, now.

Twenty-four hours ago, Pauling had been sat on the kitchen counter, her legs wrapped around Scout’s hips with his hands tangled in her hair. She’d come down the stairs early, careful not to wake Noah as she’d kissed his cheek and crept out of bed. They were her boys. Apparently that didn’t count for what she’d thought it had.

\------

Pauling went out, to her chicken coop. It was a nice chicken coop, the boys had helped her build it, and she was incredibly proud of her chickens. There were six of them, her broody hens. They were champion egg-layers, or at least she thought so. Lately she had been spending a lot of time with her chickens, just to have someone to talk to.

Gil was there, sitting in the shaded enclosure, with Mabel on his lap, stroking her feathers. Pauling tugged open the door of the chicken run, smiled a little tearily at Gil, and picked up a chicken of her own, Tiffy, just for some comfort. “Thank you. For...I know it was late. W-we didn’t have anyone else to call.”

“Seems to me the hospital ought’ve been the first choice.”

“If it were up to me, it would’ve been.” She was quiet, for a long time. “Y-you must think...about the three of us. It _is_ the three of us, them and me.”

Gil chuckled, soft and friendly. “Girl, I spent the sixties in a nudist hippy commune, dealing drugs and keeping care of the livestock. Until there’s six more of you, a tree, and a _goat_ , won’t be nothing I could bat an eyelid at.”

Oh.

“W-well. Still. It’s mixed up. We’re...the pair of them needed somebody. I only ever wanted to help.”

There was something about her chickens, and something about Gil that made Pauling talkative. She still spoke haltingly, sadly, about the things that were frustrating in her perfect, idyllic little farmhouse. It was getting to be late in the morning. She would need to drive Gil home soon.

When Noah came out, all the chickens had gathered at her feet. Gil hadn’t said much of anything, but looked up when Noah cleared his throat. He was swallowed up in his hood, shoulders hunched. Pauling looked over her shoulder, put down Effie and slipped out of the enclosure.

“How is he?”

“Spitting mad. Sore and sort of...drug hungover. He’s gonna be a week, at least, getting over this. I was thinking...there’s...there’s that motel in town. Maybe you want to get out of here for a few days. Give him some room to get over it. You could probably use a break from all our bullshit, anyway, right? I think he probably won’t even look at you right now. I think maybe he’d really freak out at you, like how I do. This...this one was bad.” Noah shifted, uncomfortably. “I, uh. I packed you a bag. So you don’t have to come in the house.”

Pauling felt like there was a pit opening inside her, raw at the edges, tearing and yawning and cold. “O-oh. Is he...oh. W-well. He’s...he’s all right, though? He won’t do anything...nothing to hurt himself? O-or…”

Noah shrugged. “Not if I can help it. It’ll just be...easier. Without you around to set him off. I think I can talk him through it.”

“Okay.” Whatever they needed. “I’ll...put the bag in the truck, and my purse. I’ll see if I can get a room for the week, or the next town over if I…”

“You’ll stay with me.” Gil put a hand on her shoulder. “C’mon, girl. You get to your truck. I’ll get your bags.”

Pauling just nodded, shrinking inside herself. She couldn’t look at Noah, the hand on her shoulder felt heavy, like warm lead. “Well. I’ll be up the road, then. Let me know when I can come home. Say goodbye for me. M-make sure my chickens get fed.”

She declined to say anything further, strode briskly past Noah with her shoulders hunched. The two men, older and younger, both watched her pass the house. Watched a flick of the curtains from one of the upper floors, as she disappeared around the corner, into the front yard. Noah spoke up, tentatively. “Well, thank you. Do we owe you any money, or did Pauling…?”

Gil was a man of few words. He had to clear his throat, and his low voice rolled out like angry molasses. “You treat that poor girl like dirt. You owe me taking a long hard look at what you damn selfish fools are doing here, and hoping like hell I don’t manage to talk her into leaving you both. Be damn sure I’m going to try. And God help you if you don’t treat these chickens like royalty.”

Gil left. Noah stood watching the chickens, numb, for what felt like a long time. Really, it was only until the car door slammed, and the purple truck in the driveway grumbled to life. Pulled away.

 


	46. monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly follows ["#44 - chicken."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/6011000)
> 
> Written from Pyro's point of view.

I am sitting on the blue-green striped armchair in the drawing room, the one I found in a thrift store three months ago and wouldn’t leave behind. We’d needed something in cool tones in this corner of the place, something to offset the toffee-colored walls. It had been perfect. I love this chair.

I’m currently ripping the side of the left arm open with my fingernails.

It was a heavy chair, but I carried it on my own out of the store and to the truck, and then again from the truck into the drawing room. I am strong.

All of us are strong. Scout is strong in the way that lets him face me down every time I lose my mind, in the way that let him survive years of clinical, systematic abuse because he thought it was the only way to protect me. Pauling is strong in the way that she’s the only one of us who, upon seeing the doe with the rotted broken leg that had been ghosting the property for a year, took her gun and put the thing out of its misery. In the way that she's put up with us for a year now and not told us to get out.

I am strong, but I am only strong in the way that lets me split wood or meat or bones with an axe, or carry a breathing corpse with a broken arm from the barn to the house without breaking a sweat. Brute strength, is what it is. How often do you separate that phrase to consider what it really means?

Pauling tells me I am brutal. She meant it in a flattering way, said in that breathless voice that knots up my gut into something hungry, looking at me from across the mattress. It had been a bad night for it. I was looking at the purple-yellow-green bruises I had laid across her body with my hands and teeth and wondering what was wrong with me. But that was the answer, wasn’t it?

I am destroying my favorite chair with my own nails so I do not hurt either of the two people on the couch a few feet away from me, because I am a brute. I am a monster, fanged and terrible, and if I stop that is what will happen. As if I hadn’t hurt them both already. Back in the barn when I couldn’t speak I clamped down right on Scout’s broken arm, unintentionally, as I was trying to scare Pauling away. I still can’t get the sound he made out of my head. I let myself be convinced it would be better to hide in the barn than try to get him help.

Once, on RED, something similar happened. I don’t remember the details, just that Scout was in the kind of agony that makes the people around him feel it and the weapons lockers were sealed off. I took him into one of the far corners of the base and sat with him for hours as he alternated between gasping sobs and glassy muteness. It was early into everything. I had never choked anyone to death before. It took me three times to do it, and I only managed the third because he’d passed out from oxygen deprivation the second.

I had really wanted to choke him again in the barn. I almost did, once, before I remembered. I just want him to stop hurting, it’s all I fucking want. No matter where we go or what we do the pain just never _stops._ I’ve spent the last seven years of my life watching him hurt. I’m so tired of it.

I’m glad there wasn’t any water because I always found drowning him much easier. I don’t know if I would have remembered in time. Just hold him down until he stops moving. Easy. Brute strength.

I don’t know how many times I’ve killed him. That’s the sort of shit I end up thinking about at night. That seems like something you would at least keep track of. But here I am. I worry I'm desensitized and that one day I really am going to kill him, out of sheer fucking habit. It's so hard to remember we don't respawn even a year after either of us has died.

I think there’s no fixing him. I think, sometimes, that a true and final death would be the kindest thing to give him. And I think these things about the man who walked into the mouth of Hell for my sake. What do you call a person like me?

As I watch, Pauling kisses Scout, and I am reminded that she has never had to watch the life drain out of him of her own doing. She has only ever seen him while he breathes. She is innocent in at least this.

The side of my favorite armchair rips open under my claws.


	47. notice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly follows ["#44 - chicken."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/6011000)
> 
> Written from Pauling's point of view, to round out the trio of First Person POVs.

All those years he spent watching me, I guess he never noticed me watching back. He wouldn’t have, of course. I’m better at it than he is.

I guess it’s just his habit not to notice me watching him, because I’ve been watching him a lot more than ever. It’s not a secret, stupid crush anymore, I don’t have to hide it. You’d think he’d have noticed by now. Except that clearly there was a lot I didn’t notice, with all my secret, surreptitious watching. So it’s not like I should talk.

If he was watching me watching him, _he’d_ know that _I_ know he’s trying to hide that his leg is getting worse. What I don’t know is _why_ , but I woke up early that one Saturday, because he fell down the basement stairs. I think he did, anyway, that was what it sounded like, but he was on his feet in the kitchen and he pretended nothing had happened, by the time I got downstairs. I think we both pretended I didn’t notice the dust on his clothes, the way his arm was scraped and red.

Noah slept through it. I wish I’d woken him, gone to check on Scout. Noah would have bullied him until he’d told the truth. He’s such a beastly bastard when you wake him, though, and he sleeps so soundly.

Next to me, anyway. Maybe we just wear each other out. He wears _me_ out and he drops off in minutes, if it’s just the two of us. But he sleeps lightly when Scout’s there, responds to every little twitch and movement. When we’re all three of us together, I have to sleep half on top of Scout to keep him still, so we all can sleep, even him, even just a couple hours.

I wonder when Noah stopped holding Scout while he sleeps. It helps him such a lot, he calms down. He won’t move for fear of waking me, so sometimes I’ll pretend to be asleep. God, broken or not, he makes me feel safe. I’m a little afraid of sleeping next to Noah, in case he wakes up mad, or Not-Noah. Usually I’ll leave Noah, unless Scout’s there with us. He helps me, too. I gave him the stolen bottle of Valium that used to get me through _my_ rough nights. I don’t think he even ever took any. I wonder if it makes me feel better or worse that he still has it.

It makes such a difference when you can get him to sleep.

This isn’t sleeping. This is sedation. This wasn’t my idea. This is a thing I shouldn’t have done, didn’t want to do, and I don’t want him to blame me for it, because he’ll be so mad. So hurt. I’d have done it to Noah, Noah could take it. Noah could’ve spent a night knocked on his ass in the barn and I wouldn’t have been terrified for him.

Barbiturates, you have to watch for respiratory depression. I think Noah thinks I’m just fussing, I think he’s got me pegged as having some sort of romantic Florence Nightingale fantasy. Maybe it started out that way for _him_ , but there’s no romance about whatever happened to Scout, because even if I held about half the dose back, his breathing is too slow, too shallow, and it keeps hitching a little. That is terrifying and not romantic and I’m not a nurse, I don’t know what to do if he stops breathing. I don’t even know if Gil would know.

I don’t think Noah notices. I love Noah, too, because when he’s all the way himself, he’s simple and pure and honest and good, and it would be impossible not to love him. But I think there’s a lot Noah’s just stopped noticing about Scout. I think Noah doesn’t see all the things I’ve had to learn to love about Scout, because they’re the only things left.

I guess I love him broken. I had a crush on him, whole, but I love him broken, because he just needs it. He needs so badly for someone to love him, and I hope that Noah still does. He needs me for all the things Noah isn’t, to do the things Noah won’t, to be someone with whom he won’t always share something terrible and secret. But I’m not enough all on my own, they still shut me out. Noah’s a lot stronger than I am, and there are things that I won’t do.

Next time I need to wake Noah, because he would have said something to Scout about his leg. If he’d known about his leg, like I did, he would have known better than to ask Scout to get up on the roof of that stupid fucking barn.

  
  
  



	48. vet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #26 - "vet" - by Pemm.
> 
> Written from Scout's point of view.
> 
> Directly follows [#7 - "furious."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5968421)

The way Pyro told it, Miss Pauling just, fuckin. Strolled on in with some vet. I don’t fucking care if it’s a vet, if you look up “veterinarian” in the God-damn dictionary it’ll say  _animal doctor._ They’re all God-damn doctors. I don’t fuckin care,  _I don’t care,_ I told Pyro he’d better just fucking well kill me if I ever got hurt bad enough to have to go to another doctor and I wish he’d’ve—

… they knocked me out. Again. _Again._ This is just what they fuckin damn well do when they don’t feel like askin my permission for things, I guess, ain’t that great. My left arm’s in a sling. It hurts like a bitch, not that I ain’t used to that. I can’t hardly do anything it’s bad enough. I’m useless. I can’t cook or do practically anything. Useless fucking cripple. I ought to go fucking jump off the barn roof again and see if that don’t kill me. Nobody else around here’s willing to do it.

A fucking vet.

When I came to Pauling and Pyro were both there. I was groggy as shit, it took me a while to figure out why I couldn’t move my arm. Pyro sent Pauling out the damn room before I got all the way there. I can’t fucking believe this. Oh, wait, yeah I can, since this literally fuckin happened once already, just drug Scout up when he ain’t doin what we want, that’s fine. That’s fuckin _fine._

Pyro told me he couldn’t stop her. Like fuck he couldn’t, I’ve seen Pyro knock guys twice his size on their asses. _“Couldn’t stop her,”_ just, _fuck_ him, fuck both of them, they don’t have _any idea_ what it’s like for me, they don’t…

I got knocked out about three times a week. Average. If I was lucky. Sometimes more. Near the end there I didn’t know if it was worse being awake or being out, because I was just out _all the God-damn time._ Either I was on that fucking goddamn table or I was in respawn or I was hopped up on something to where I couldn’t recognize nobody, not even Pyro.

There’s—there ain’t no way he couldn’t’a stopped her. He already let her put me down once already. The first time, fine, fuck, Miss Pauling didn’t know about me and—that shit. Fine. And I did need to sleep, fine. But now she does know and Pyro knows and they just. Did it anyway. My arm woulda been fine.

And if it wouldn’t’a been fine then who fucking cares.

Who even fucking cares.


	49. cemetery

The little town nearest them wasn’t good for much, but it was quaint and scenic and pretty. It was a lovely place for autumn walks, and had a large, sprawling graveyard near the town’s tall, white spired church. It was wooded and peaceful and lovely, and Pauling had parked her truck just outside the gates. Pauling had finally found a hobby that seemed like it might stick, and when she had downtime, liked to trawl the countryside for old cemeteries, with her roll of paper and her tape and her disk of red wax. She liked grave rubbings, she already had about half a dozen, waiting to be trimmed and framed. The day was nice enough and they were both up for a walk, Scout and Pyro decided to tag along. Sometimes it was important to make sure there was a day for Miss Pauling.

This was her first time making it out to the cemetery in town with time to spare. Noah had been a little anxious, worried about trespassing, but Scout had laughed and hopped the low fence, just a little clumsily. Gave Pauling a hand over, and then wandered off among the headstones. Noah took Pauling’s hand, sticking close. She tended to be good at talking her way out of trouble, and he was feeling mildly nervous.

“I do know the gravekeeper,” she assured him, as she made her way down the rows of stones, looking for a favourite. “It won’t be any trouble.”

Noah nodded, willing, for now at least, to be reassured. The place was quiet, the melted frost of a late autumn chill deadening the noise of the leaves beneath their feet. It would probably snow before the week was out. “Mmm. I can’t decide if this is disrespectful. It seems like we’re...well. I don’t know. My family was never close to anyone who’d died. I’ve never really been in a graveyard before. None of these are... _our_ people.”

Pauling shook her head. “It’s all right. It doesn’t hurt anything. What’s the harm in a few extra people remembering your name when you’re dead? And thinking that the last thing left to remember you in the world is worth seeing? It’s nice.” She shrugged, blushed, kicked at the leaves on the ground. “I think so, anyway. I mean, I’m not an artist like you two. But I like pretty gravestones, and it feels a little bit like I make these. I should put _something_ on our walls.”

“You’re very sweet. Where’d you learn to do this?”

“My grandmother taught me. For my parents’ grave. I wanted....well. It sounds creepy to say it, but I wanted to be able to think about where they were. It helped to have a rubbing of their headstone. I still have it. I’ll show you, at home, if you want..”

She was shy, a little self-conscious. Impossibly endearing. Noah loved her sternness, her steel. The fact that she took no shit from either of them, not when it mattered. That she kept lifting her head every minute or so, to check on Scout, who’d pulled a small pad and paper out of his pocket and was ambling around a crumbling old mausoleum, hunting for a good angle. But mostly he loved that there was a sweet, genuine girl underneath all her womanhood and ferocity. “I’d like that.”

Pauling smiled. “Here, you pick one. Nothing in too rough shape, nothing crumbly or cracking. I have to brush the moss off it, I don’t want to do any damage to the stone if I can help it.”

He picked one. She knelt amid the grass, started to work. He sat beside to her, removed a paperback book from his pocket and began to read. It was a nice day, despite the chill. Eventually Scout joined them, bored of sketching, and lowered himself gingerly onto the damp ground. Once she seemed not in the middle of anything and safe to interrupt, he put a hand on Pauling’s waist, pulled her into his lap. Tense, Scout hated to be touched, got withdrawn and edgy. Relaxed, on a good day, he would solicit affection wherever he could get it, and cuddled a tolerant Pauling for a few minutes, before letting her up and shifting to lean against Noah, handing over his sketchbook for comment.

It was a nice place to pass an hour, and it passed with surprising speed. When Pauling had decided she was finished, Noah graciously helped her to her feet. Scout rolled up the piece of paper she’d carefully unstuck from the gravestone. “Nice that you do this. I dunno why. S’just...nice. I like it,” he commented, idly, and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

Pauling beamed, the way she only did when she was really, properly pleased. “Thank you. Oh! You guys, I had such a nice time. Thank you for coming. It’s kind of a lonely hobby.” She caught them both by the hands, and just laughed. Just a pretty girl, laughing in a graveyard, not alone for once.

  
  



	50. infection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly follows ["vet."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/5989661)

“What the hell do you mean, _‘gone’_?”

The next morning. Breakfast. Scout had gone from frothing to brooding.

Pyro stuffed the last of his toast in his mouth. Meals got uninspired when Scout couldn’t cook. “Not ... gone. Wrong word. She’s … with the vet. Um, Gil. For a few days.” Scout’s glower had not slackened. He was sitting stiff-backed in one of the kitchen chairs, his food untouched. Pauling was not there. Scout had asked why. Pyro, now, glanced away. “… just thought it would be better for everyone like that.”

“You just thought,” Scout muttered. “Was leaving her idea?”

“… No.”

“Jesus. So you—what, kicked her out? This isn’t even our fucking house, Pyro.”

“I didn’t _kick her out_.”

“Then what?” Scout said, getting slowly, awkwardly to his feet. His arm was still tucked in a sling, a surreal sight for Pyro. He was used to Scout whole and used to Scout dead, or dying, but the in-between states were fewer and farther between. No one on the team had ever been in a sling, as far as he could remember. “So bring her back.”

A pained sigh, and Pyro rubbed his eyes. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I mean the last time we did something like this to you without your permission you wanted to kill her!”

Scout snarled exactly like a dog. “Yeah, an’ that was a fuckin’ year ago an’ we were just right off the team an’ I was goddamn scared of goddamn everything! I’m fuckin’ mad at both of you, I _know_ you let her drug me, but I ain’t kickin’ you outta the goddamn house, am I?”

Pyro was glaring at him now, still hunching. Scout’s lip curled. “And another thing, I know it was fuckin’ stupid of me t’think I could go without gettin’ my arm fixed too. _I know that._ I’m not the goddamn idiot you two think I am. You shouldn’t’a fuckin’ listened to me, I thought you knew better to goddamn listen to me anymore when I’m hurt.”

“Sorry for trying to damn well do what I thought you wanted.”

“I _want_ to keep my arm,” Scout snapped. “I don’t listen to you when you get all crazy and tell me I’m a stupid useless cripple, do I, ‘cuz I know that ain’t you talkin’. You shouldn’t be listenin’ to me when I tell you I don’t need a doctor when I’ve just gone an’ _broken my arm_ ‘cuz you know that ain’t … I don’t know what it is but I know it’s gonna get me killed an’ you shouldn’t oughta fuckin’ be listenin’ to it.”

Pyro could feel the disgust creeping on his face. He shoved his empty plate out of the way, out of reach in case things went too far south. That didn’t stop the disdainful hiss that rose out of his mouth. “I have brain damage. I can’t help what I say, sometimes. You’re just a coward.”

The word tasted filthy as it left his mouth, it scalded his lips and left a vast hole in Pyro’s gut. He could practically see it drill through Scout’s chest now, straight to the heart of him. He looked stunned for a second, lost. Then his face darkened into thunder. He growled: “I’d rather be a coward than someone who hits his girlfriend.”

They stared at each other, Scout’s face livid and daring him, Pyro concentrating all effort into keeping his own blank. Pyro wet his lips. “What Pauling _asks_ me to do isn’t any of your business.”

“It kinda fucking is seein’ as how I got a vested interest in keepin’ her in one piece an’ all, seein’ as how she’s my girlfriend too, y’know?”

“No, it really isn’t!” Pyro snapped, the table groaning as he stood and slammed his hands against it. “You don’t have any idea what we do or how we do it, or why, and I’m not going to let you stand there and say that shit to my face.”

“Say what, say you fuckin’ hit Pauling an’ bite her an’ all of that and then make up shit about how it’s good for both of you?”

“How many fucking times does she have to tell you it’s okay?” Pyro’s voice cracked, faltered. “I wouldn’t—I don’t do anything she doesn’t want me to do. I know I made a mistake with you and I’m sorry, I’ve apologized, I don’t know what you want.”

“I want to know what kind’a fucked up you are to think you can hurt her and love her at the same time!” Scout stopped short, then straightened his back and regarded Pyro with—distrust was the only word for it. “But y’know I guess maybe that ain’t what you’re doin‘. Maybe you’re just doin’ the one an’ not the other. I guess I don’t know.”

In the ten seconds it took Pyro to truly comprehend what he meant, he could feel his face flushing red, heating up. “Excuse me?”

Scout said nothing, watching him silently. Pyro grit his teeth, felt his fingers dig into the wood. “How dare you,” he started. “How fucking dare you.”

“Yeah how dare I, damn, how dare I start wonderin’ when you’re leavin’ bruises when you fuck her an’ then kick her outta her own goddamn house soon as it suits you! I know what love looks like, Pyro, I know what it looks like when _you_ love someone, or at least I thought I did. If this is your fuckin’ idea of love then you ain’t the same guy I fell in love with.”

Pyro laughed. Just started laughing, the mirthless, too-loud laugh that only came out when he was too angry to speak. Scout fell silent, and finally Pyro looked up at him with a sharp-edged grin that didn’t even get close to his eyes. “And you think you _are_? Oh my God. That’s hilarious. That’s _hilarious,_ because the Scout I fell in love with couldn’t shut up for longer than thirty seconds and he didn’t have panic attacks twice a week or need to be told he was worth something every ten minutes. I don’t know who _you_ are, you’re just this fragile, scared, weak thing that looks like him!”

The longer he had gone on, the louder and more mocking Pyro’s voice had gotten, and the more rigid and pale-looking Scout had become. The words had come tumbling out one after the other, almost before Pyro could register what he had been saying.

Scout stared at him. Just stared. Didn’t speak, looked unsteady on his feet, looked like he would shatter at the lightest touch.

His limp seemed more pronounced than usual when he fled the kitchen.

 

* * *

  

Scout managed to hold himself together until he got outside. All bets were off after that.

He wasn’t sure how he got to the barn. His head was spinning, his ears were full of static, his hands were shaking. More than his hands. He stepped wrong, lost his balance, fell. Managed not to land on his broken arm, but instead ripped a massive bloody swath down his hand and wrist as he tried to catch himself on the door frame. One edge of the frame was studded with protruding nails, and of course that was the side he grabbed. Scout did not so much as yelp as he hit the dirt floor.

For a few merciful seconds he was not aware of much. Then the cool dirt reached him, instantly followed by the shrieking hurt in his arm. Scout grit his teeth and pushed himself upright.

There was blood on the floor, dark spots. He’d thought the broken arm hurt, but it paled now next to the fresh pain in his arm. Blood on the nails, too. Grimacing, he looked at himself. A raw gash ripped down the lower half of his palm, going halfway down his forearm before stopping. His hand wrap was in ribbons.

He stared at it for longer than he meant to, frozen. Blood. A lot of blood. Scout was no stranger to blood, could handle it. But he hadn’t seen so much blood at once in well over a year.

Since Medic.

Scout wasn’t sure how he’d gotten to the barn. He wasn’t sure how long he sat staring at his arm, at the blood running down it from a too-brutal cut.

He felt remarkably better.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes (often) Medic would forget to disinfect things. Scout had known this, had learned it rapidly, but he always died or was healed soon enough after that it rarely mattered. He’d thought it wouldn’t matter the first time he went home with one Medic had neglected to fix.

It hadn’t been much, even, just a cut in his side. As long as he kept it bandaged and turned Pyro down for anything that he had to take his shirt off for, it would be fine until he could go back to work, right?

It had not been fine. It had turned black and oozed yellow pus almost overnight, and when Pyro found out about it he had panicked and called the doctor, only for Scout to knock the phone out of his hands. Together they had clumsily tried to care for it, and by the time RED called them back Scout almost couldn’t walk for pain.

They had taught themselves proper first aid and wound care, after that.

Scout had snuck back into the house, made his way to the main bathroom. Dragged down the hydrogen peroxide, done everything right. Afterward, he would go and see if he could find the veterinarian, and by extension Miss Pauling, and bring her back. He felt much calmer, even content, as he planned and dressed the wound.

Wounds, rather. A few more had appeared around the first, smaller and shallower and strategically located.

After all, he thought as he carefully pulled on a new hand wrap, no one else had to know there had only been one to start.


	51. champagne

Between the two of them, Scout and Pyro were millionaires a few times over. Neither of them particularly cared about money, or wanted for anything beyond their life as it stood, and as Pauling was near pathological about her finances, she wouldn’t let them pay for anything. Not rent nor food, she felt they did enough by way of hard labour to earn their place. It wasn’t that they hadn’t tried. But she had bought her house outright, had been squirreling away money to pay for it for the entirety of her career, and had retired with sensible investments that paid out reliable dividends. She had things entirely under control.

It was a tiny little town. It was about ten miles from the house, and they’d only stopped on their way back through to get gas. They’d made the long drive into the city, Pauling’s birthday. Miss Pauling didn’t celebrate birthdays. Scout had found out when hers was, purely by accident. He had accidentally rifled through her purse until he’d found her driver’s license, and then had accidentally slipped the information to Pyro, and accidentally baked a passable cake. They had both accidentally begged her to let them take her out. Especially as it was her champagne birthday, and it was a well-known fact that Miss Pauling adored champagne. And was an adorable, bubbly, silly drunk.

It was possible they’d gone a bit overboard. Noah had insisted on taking her shopping. Noah had a better eye for clothes than either of them, and was maybe a little less kind about it than he could have been. Scout had hauled him by the back of the collar, out of the little boutique and onto the sidewalk, where he’d told him off thoroughly for driving Miss Pauling to tears on her birthday, because who the fuck cared if she was a “winter” who dressed like an “autumn”, it was her birthday, he was going to buy her every goddamn fucking purple dresses she liked. Or  _else_.

He had submitted to being measured for a new suit to cheer Pauling up and ward off a fit of irrational fury from Noah. This put Scout in a fouler temper than expected, even if he  _did_ look incredible when he wore tailored clothing, and he needed to be placated in turn.

So he’d been permitted to drag them both through a sprawling park, resplendent in autumn red and gold, in search of a hot dog vendor. They hadn’t found one, but had managed to feed ducks at a pond and fly a stolen kite for an hour or so, and lunched at a little bistro instead.

They’d checked into the most expensive hotel they could find. Had ridiculous, raucous sex, the kind that had the hotel manager calling in the middle because the entire floor below them was complaining. Laughed. Went swimming in the hotel pool, until they were asked to put on swimsuits or leave. Then the three of them had dragged on newly acquired formal wear, pretended that they liked opera, and attempted to go to one. They’d been asked to leave  _that_ not even halfway through the overture. Miss Pauling lamented the loss of her new underwear the whole way back to the hotel.

They’d spent most the night, popped open bottles of champagne, boxes of chocolates, upturned a complimentary bowl of strawberries. Misbehaved. Badly. There had been a small flood. Been evicted, at four in the morning, still a little too drunk to be driving. Miss Pauling had forgotten her shoes, and gotten a sleepy, drowsy piggy-back from Scout, who was like a bloodhound, as far as hangover-cures went. If you gave him five minutes and he didn’t have a headcold or something impairing his sense of smell, he could find a 24-hour diner in any city in the continental United States.

He found a magnificent hole in the wall, where they were the only customers, and phenomenally overdressed. Noah had thrown a handful of bills on the counter, flipped the switch for the open sign, and grandiosely claimed a corner booth for his party. An hour’s worth of dawdling over pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausage—then another three hours worth of coffee, and about twenty minutes worth of pie, studded with birthday candles, because Scout was sneaky. Pauling bawled her eyes out, and they ceremoniously paid the bill.

They’d let Scout drive, there and back, and now they were letting him fill the gas tank. It was a sweet, crisp September morning, and Pauling stood with Noah, near the back of her pretty half-purple truck. He had an arm around her shoulders, rested his chin on the top of her head, kissed her, murmured below his breath, ”Think it was  _his_  birthday, the way he’s pretending it’s his damn truck.”

Pauling smiled. The windshield didn’t need cleaning, but Scout was cleaning it anyway. “Let him be.”

"Thank you for being born. I don’t know where we’d be without you."

She blushed, prettily. “You’re welcome. Least I could do.” Pauling sighed, looked down at her bare feet. “I wish I hadn’t lost my shoes.”

 


	52. be merry

When Noah had gone to her a week or so before Christmas and said uneasily that maybe she should keep an eye on Scout—that Scout was acting cagey and secretive—of course Miss Pauling had worried. It had been sort of a relief when Scout insisted on going along with her to get a few things in the city. Maybe he would talk to her, if something was up. (And it would be useful to have him around if the ice sent them into a ditch.)

They did not go into a ditch, and Scout did not talk to her of anything important. He chattered, though, in an infectious good mood. Miss Pauling soon found herself in similarly high spirits. It was hard not to. Scout was like that. It stayed the same the whole time they were in town, getting things for Christmas, which Noah had said they’d stopped paying any attention to a few years ago. Miss Pauling liked holly boughs and house lights and pretty ornaments, and she had maybe snuck more than one or two sprigs of mistletoe into her basket too. Scout cheerfully carried everything, piling on chocolate-covered cherries and candy canes.

“I ain’t got any idea when Pyro’s had one’a these last,” he said when they were back in the car, unwrapping one for himself and sticking it in the corner of his mouth. “He’s gonna go nuts, you ever see a cat on catnip? That’s Pyro an’ peppermint, swear to God. Hey–hey, heck, pull over, lookit the sweaters they got in that window oh my God—”

They pulled over. They got the most heinous, overpriced sweaters Scout could find, and he even found a matching hat, gloves, and scarf for Pyro, who spent even less time outside when it snowed–the sun bounced off it, he said, one of the worst sunburns of his life had happened in winter.

It was dark by the time they left the boutique, and they got dinner at an extravagant little restaurant. Scout talked their way into a fake reservation, woolen cat sweater and all. They had oysters and wine and Scout revealed what a charming romantic he could be if the mood took him: sly grins, shameless flirting, you absolutely did not need to show off your tongue that much eating oysters. Pauling would have been lying to herself if she thought she wasn’t at least a little bit smitten when he led her out to the truck afterward. They pulled to a stop at a dark, secluded park, and by then the cab had warmed up, and Scout was grinning like mad when she pulled him down on top of her.

It took headlights out of nowhere and a honking horn to send them scrambling back upright and peeling out of the park, laughing hysterically. They were still giggling, Scout’s arm slung around Pauling’s shoulder, when a few minutes later he nudged her and pointed toward a certain shop. “There it is, damn, about time,” he said. “Whole reason I wanted to come out in the first place. Pyro kept tryin’ta look over my shoulder whenever I went to look the place up.”

[------]

Scout had said he wanted to save it for a Christmas present, since he hadn’t gotten Pyro anything in about four years. Pauling, through wheedling and strategic suggestion, convinced him otherwise. “We’ve had such a nice night, and he started worrying about you again.” That was enough for Scout, so they got ribbons and bows, and he borrowed Miss Pauling’s lipstick out of her purse and left a dark purple kiss inside the card.

It was an hour and a half later when they rolled back home, and through the front window Pauling could see Pyro watching for them. That was fine. She trotted in ahead while Scout futzed with the packages: “Noah? We’re back.”

He was already in the hallway. “Hey,” he said as she pulled off her coat and shivered. “How’d it go? You were gone a while.”

“Mmm,” Pauling said pensively, and beckoned him down the hall, into the kitchen. She saw his face tighten in a grimace as he followed. “We got a little sidetracked.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Sort of,” she started, and paused as they heard the door open and shut, heard Scout’s distinct gait moving heavily down the hall. Noah gave her a worried look and took a step toward the door; she grabbed his wrist and shook her head. “Give him a minute.”

Later she would feel bad, a little, about the bluff. He’d really been worried. But Scout was quick, and she didn’t have to filibuster too long before he called, “Pyro? You wanna c’mere?”

There was no stopping Pyro this time, and Pauling followed him into the dining room—bumped into his back when he stopped short in the doorway. Peering around him, she bit back her smile, failed, and took his hand.

On the dining table Scout had set up the easels he had bought, along with the rolls of canvas and the huge set of rich oil paints and something like two dozen kinds of brushes. There were smocks and tarps and sponges, turpentine, empty jars, color wheels, gesso, palette knives, things Pauling couldn’t even begin to guess the names of. And Scout was sitting on the edge of the table—his leg had started to bother him after a full day of walking—and he was grinning that lopsided hopeful grin that Pauling had only seen a few times before. He’d stuck a bow on his shirt. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

Miss Pauling felt Noah tug his hand away from hers, and when she looked up she found it was to use it to cover his mouth. He switched over to biting the back of it for a second, stuttered a few times, and finally just stumbled across the room to wrap Scout up in a rib-bruising hug. She heard him mutter, “I told you you’re not supposed to make me cry anymore,” just before Scout kissed him, deep and passionate. That was when Miss Pauling stepped out to give them some room, smiling to herself, shutting the dining room door quietly behind her.


	53. trip up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Use of a single, self-directed slur.

He was pretty sure he’d had more schooling than most of the members of his team, whether he’d flunked out or not. He had Opinions about Art. He had taken a minor in Russian Literature, mostly out of pretension. Chekov bored him nearly to death, relevant themes or not.

But here, they wanted him to be a brutal monster in a flameproof suit. They wanted to make him immortal, wanted to point him out into the world and let him burn it down, along with anyone who happened to be in it. And they’d offered him an exorbitant amount of money to put on a mask and be terrifying.

That was fine. That was pretty good, actually. It wasn’t a difficult job. Not complex in execution, anyway, though ethically it was a hornet’s nest. It was hard work and it was hot and the unremitting New Mexico sun was not kind to a man with albinism, but the Pyro felt better in a mask or a hood these days anyway. He hadn’t told anyone his name, or shown anyone his face, beyond the lady who’d hired him, and her neat, prim assistant. She was sweet, if bookish, and they’d chatted a bit. He’d flirted, just offhandedly, out of habit and not out of interest. She’d blushed, and awkwardly put him off.

Then he’d gotten his mask, and that had been all he wanted from that point on. He didn’t feel like telling anyone his name was Noah, because Noah was twenty-one and had been expelled from art school and thrown out of his home by wealthy parents, and had a string of six or seven arsons that a determined detective could probably convict him of, if they could find him. He didn't want to be Noah. Sometimes Noah hated to be looked at, and the heat be damned, he’d been at this two months and was in the best shape of his life so far. He was shedding pounds put on with fine food and wine and soft living under the roof of a family who had wasted their money on art school for their faggot of a son, and hated him now. Not that he was bitter or angry about it. It was just fuel. The harder-- _ tougher _ \--he became under the suit and the mask, the better. When he could take it off, he wanted to be someone different.

These days he had a diversion. The Pyro had been waiting for the Scout to trip up.

If he was honest, he’d spent most of the days since he’d noticed him-- _ really _ noticed him--waiting for the Scout to trip up. But he was young and he was fast and he was agile, and there was no keeping up with him, at least not while Pyro was hauling around the quantity of gear he generally did, in the field. It was hard to know where he was going to be at any given point in time, Pyro still wasn’t entirely sure what the point of it all was. It seemed to vary from day to day and place to place. 

Pyro liked girls with the heart of a romantic young man. He liked that they were sweet and lovely and delicate. He liked the way they looked at him speculatively after they had decided he was pretty. He liked a certain type of artistic, free spirited girl. With olive skin and almond eyes and chestnut hair, so much the better. Girls were great.

But he liked boys with a  _ vengeance _ . He liked boys in a way that was personal, with spite mixed in. He liked the sort of boys who would have appalled his parents, if his sister had brought them home to dinner. Boys who were loud, unrefined, ill-mannered. Boys who were still boyish, immature, uninterested in being adults. Corruptible. The Scout, in a word.

But it was hard to get a boy's attention, when you weren't a pale, chiseled demigod of an undergrad on the campus of an art school, brooding and mysterious. Or newly disgraced, back in your hometown, and with a fresh, liberal attitude about that one gay bar downtown. It was especially hard when the boy in question had the attention span of a goldfish and wouldn’t sit still or stay in one place for long enough to be impressed by the fact you could lift a flamethrower with a full tank straight over your head. When all you did in your downtime was skulk around and hide in your room, not even eating with the others. When you were getting a reputation as a freak and a psychopath. Those were obstacles.

So he’d been waiting for the Scout to trip up. And he did, finally, one day at the base they called Badwater, went careening showily off the top of a low building to land with a thud and a yelp in the dirt on the other side of it.  _ Finally _ .

The Pyro lumbered over, ignoring the crack of gunfire around him. It was remarkable how quickly he’d learned to tune that sort of thing out. How quickly he’d learned not to worry about getting shot, how he’d learned to reframe it as a temporary setback, if and when it happened. Tougher everyday.

He rounded the corner, and the Scout was already halfway back to his feet, leaning against the wall, left leg all bloodied and gingerly held off the ground. He was reloading his shotgun, apparently unperturbed by the dark scrapes of blood below his knee. He looked up sharply when the Pyro came into view, momentarily tense, then wary. “Oh. Hey, man, s’okay. ‘m fine, you oughta get back where there’s some cover, y’ain’t too good out in the open.”

Aww. Sweet. The Pyro didn’t listen, shambled forward, hefting his flamethrower over to one hand and holding out an arm for the Scout to catch hold of. One hand! The flamethrower probably weighed just about as much as the scrawny bastard in front of him. That was impressive. The Scout did not look impressed.

“ Uh. No. Um,  _ really _ , man. Get outta here.”

Maybe it wasn’t obvious what the Pyro was trying to do. He approached, ducked under the arm the Scout was leaning against the wall, supported him on the gimpy left side. Scrawny was being kind, but the hand that caught his shoulder was surprisingly strong, shoved him away.

“ Back.  _ Off _ .” Muttered something under his breath, put his weight on his left leg and grimaced. “Honest t’god, get us both  _ killed _ .” Took off, only limping slightly, without a backward glance.

Oh. Damn. Stupid straight boys.

\------

“Hey.”

Back in the locker rooms, sulking. They hadn’t won. Pyro hadn’t used to care, one way or the other, but there was a certain sense of  team spirit seeping into him. He looked up, at the Scout. Skinny, awkward. Too young, anyway, what, probably not even nineteen. Stupid straight boy. “Hmm?”

He had blue-grey eyes, earnest. Tanned, god, Noah had used to love a boy with a tan. Probably tan lines, the back of his neck, his upper arms. He loved the border between light and dark skin.  _ Stupid _ fucking straight boys. “Sorry for yellin’ atcha. I mean...’ppreciated the thought. Just, I get kinda stressed out, an’ I draw a lotta fire, ‘specially if any of the other team catches sighta me slowed down. I didn’t wanna getcha hurt, killed on my account.”

Well. Pyro shrugged, glad of the mask hiding his wry, self-mocking smirk. “Mmhmm.”

“Yeah. Uh. Guess we’re okay? Hey, Pyro?”

He shrugged again, nodded.

The Scout didn’t seem eager to leave. He’d been like the rest of the team, avoiding Pyro. Maybe he was starting to feel a little bit sorry for him. “Umm. Well. Uh. So…”

_ God, small talk. Get bored and leave, dummy.  _ Sullen contempt wasn’t an expression that was easy to convey with pure body language, and Pyro tended to hunch himself up with every emotion, anyway.

“Hey. Um. Fourth of July soon, right? Guy like you’s gotta like fireworks. You oughta come. I mean, if you wanna. Y’always hole up in your room, s’why ain’t nobody ever talks t’you.” The awkwardness was still palpable, but now it was a little shy. A little cute. “Anyway. I gotta go. Thanks, man. Sorry ‘bout how I am kind of an ass.”

Oh, what the hell. “Mmm _ hmm _ .” But, friendlier now, along with a thumbs up. Really smiling, not that it was visible. Body language. 

Scout grinned, reassured. “Cool. ‘kay. See you!” Turned and left, and he never moved at anything less than a bouncy jog. Pyro had been watching.

Probably he was going to need to get the damn dumb mask off, if he wanted to make any further progress. Kind of an ass in _ deed _ .

 


	54. lesson one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly follows #52 - trip up.

From the minute Pyro had walked in, that mask over his head and his voice so muffled you would have had an easier time understanding him if he’d communicated via interpretive dance instead, Scout hadn’t liked the guy. He was just annoying. And he was a show-off! Scout had absolutely had things covered that time it was just him and his bat against the BLU soldier, he hadn’t needed Pyro diving in to airblast the damn rockets.

And Pyro kept watching him, too. All the damn time, it seemed like. Maybe it was the mask that made it seem that way. What the hell was the guy hiding under the mask anyway?

He found out a lot quicker than he would have expected, given he totally didn’t care. The team’s first big holiday together was the fourth of July, and that meant beer. A whole lot of beer.

Maybe too much beer, but Scout hadn’t been thinking about that when he threw himself down next to Pyro, who had been sucking down cider through a straw all night. “Hey,” he said, squinting over at his teammate, “hey, you. You an’ your mask.”

“Mmhm?”

“Whaddya you got under that thing? You ain’t taken it off ever. Take it off,” Scout repeated, batting at the big filter stuck to the side of it.

Pyro seemed to watch him (who could tell, seriously) for a few seconds, and then put his drink down. To Scout’s surprise, he reached up and pulled it off in a single smooth movement. The face blinking in the dim light was so pale as to be ghostly white, dappled with a massive swath of freckles cutting diagonally across his cheekbone and nose, with more scattered elsewhere. He had alarmingly blond hair and his chin had bristles and he had long eyelashes and … shit, he was cute.

Oh no.

“Happy now?” Pyro said cheekily, in a voice a good deal deeper and richer than Scout had expected. He took another pull off his cider, looked Scout over, and this silly, drunken sort of grin began to spread across his face. “Umm. I’ve got albinism, if that’s what you’re staring at.”

“Wh, uh, I weren’t starin’,” Scout started, leaning back. “I was just lookin’. You got more goddamn freckles than a dalmatian. Why didn’t you never take the thing off before? I figured you was like Frakenstein under there.”

“No one ever asked,” Pyro said with a shrug. “I can’t take it off outside when the sun’s out and I get nervous eating around other people so I just do it in my room. I dunno.”

Small talk, small talk. Neither of them moved from their seats until the end of the night, and by then they could barely walk straight, and Scout’s hand might’ve wandered a little close to Pyro’s hip and Pyro’s might’ve started teasing Scout’s hair. Pyro’s room was closer, and Scout mentioned his was pretty damn far away, and shit, was that a painting in there, had Pyro painted that? “Yeah,” Pyro said, his cheeks bright red and still grinning. “Yeah, that’s mine. I was a painter before, uh, before RED.”

“Cool, that’s, that’s real cool, can you paint me?”

“Mmn,” Pyro had said, and how long had his hand been that far up Scout’s thigh? It was warm and heavy and very, very pleasant. “I think I’d need to do some studies on you first …”

Later, Scout would not remember a great deal of the rest of the night. It was all heat and frantic motion and low moans. What he would mostly remember was collapsing back down to the mattress at last, sweaty and trembling, and Pyro pulling the blanket over them, and freckled hands (the freckles went everywhere, it turned out) sliding over his shoulders to his back and pulling him close.

(In the morning, he awoke to Pyro staring him in the face, wide-eyed and bleary-looking. Scout returned it for a full five seconds before blinking hard and saying, “So was that an art lesson?”)


	55. slush

Scout hated hardware stores and Pyro didn’t like grocery shopping, but she’d needed their help picking up lumber at the hardware store beforehand, so there was no reason for them not to help her in loading their weekly groceries into the car. She was cheerful, in a good mood, which radiated out to both of them. The ground was wet and slushy and slick, late November.

Miss Pauling went into town often enough that she was a familiar face to most of the residents, she got smiles and waves. The girl who had fixed up the old farmhouse, bought lumber, nails and paint. Sometimes Noah joined her, Scout less frequently. He was a bit of a snob about small towns, and couldn’t see the point of a place where the most interesting thing to do was go to the post office. Where the most interesting gossip that floated around town was that the church was getting a new roof. They’d been living in the vicinity for about two years, and even if he wasn’t in town terribly often, Scout was so fucking sick of hearing about the goddamn church roof.

So, when across the parking lot a voice shrieked, “Jezebel! Trollop! _Harlot_! _SATAN’S WHORE_ ,” he was at least delighted by the prospect that it might make for some more interesting talk around the gas station, if he happened to be in town because it was his turn to fuel up the truck. This was until he noticed that Pauling had frozen, straight backed, tense. And that the man standing behind the open back doors of a large white van was frothing, pointing at her.

“ _Shit,_ ” she hissed, under her breath. “Oh. It’s _Thursday_.”

What.

“Slut!” the man barked, jumping up and down now, like an excited terrier. “Slut! _Slut!_ ”

Pyro was dumbstruck, and his hand had gone to Pauling’s arm as soon as he’d seen her tense. His gaze kept going back and forth between the pair of them, the bizarre, completely unprovoked verbal assault from the man across the parking lot, and Pauling, still taut, trapped. “Uh. Is...he’s not yelling at _you_ , Pauling? Right?”

Miss Pauling hadn’t moved, but now her eyes widened, her leather-gloved hands going to her cheeks. “Oh, no. Oh no no. You guys weren’t supposed to come into town today. Shoot. Oh, darn it.”

“ _WHORE!_ ”

“Oh my god, I’m gonna have to kill a guy.” It had been a really long time since Scout had killed a guy. It was probably like riding a bike, but it’d been a while since he’d done _that_ either. He made a mental note to get a bike. “Fuck. I don’t even fuckin’ _know_ that guy. D’you two know that guy? Fuck. One’a you must. Fuck it. Pyro. Gimme the tire iron.”

“Do _not_.” Pauling’s voice cracked like a whip, stopped the both of them. Not loud. Just forceful. Pyro had already halfway reached the tire iron, Scout had halfway shrugged out of his jacket.

She’d changed. Something about her had fundamentally altered, she was somehow taller, sterner. Still barely five-one and wearing her dainty purple frock coat and with her glasses just a little crooked. But taller. Her face had set. She spun on her heel, and said one more word over her shoulder, “ _Stay_.” Pauling crossed the parking lot, and neither of them could have stopped her.

The man who’d been shouting had frozen too, his face a twisted mask of leering dread. He was tall, taller than Scout, probably, and taller than Noah and Pauling for sure. The back of his van had some logo stenciled across the back. Pauling stopped a few feet from him. “You do understand you’ve violated our contract,” she began, low, but loud enough that it was audible to everyone watching.

“Thrice-damned _witch!_ ” he shrieked back at her, spittle flying visibly. Pauling didn’t bat an eye.

Scout managed to look up, at the entirety of the rest of the parking lot, caught in the same tableau, stock-still, staring. His skin crawled slightly, he hunched down and inched a little closer to Noah, whose expression had gone from blankly shocked to cautiously curious. He absently took Scout’s hand when it pawed at his sleeve, squeezed his fingers.

“On your knees.” Her voice was sharp now, edged with command.

And he did it. The strange, scarecrow man dropped to the ground, muddied and cold with November slush. He grinned up at her, salaciously. “Mistress.”

She slapped him. Put her shoulder into it, all a hundred and ten pounds of her reverberating in the sound of it, leather on flesh. Scout quailed visibly and Noah flinched a little. “Wow,” he murmured. “Okay. Oh, boy.”

Pauling’s expression was icy, dark contempt. “Do _not_ address me. You _filth_. Don’t even _look_ at me.”

The man’s eyes dropped, he shrank lower to the ground, half her height now. His eyes were darting, wild, at everyone in the parking lot but Pauling, grinning a maniac grin, teeth bared.

Noah at least had a frame of reference. Scout was just trembling now. “What the fuck. Jesus. W-wh...hmm. Mmm, no. N-no, I...hm. Make her... _them_ stop.”

Pyro shook his head. “Can’t. Go sit in the truck, you maybe don’t want to…”

A wet, staccato crack. She’d stomped with the heel of her boot on one of the man’s hands, and he yelped in pain. “How _dare you_. You. Do _not_. Speak. To _me_. In _public_.” She punctuated the sentence with further strikes from the heel of her boot, perilously near his fingers.

“Oh god.” Noah had put a steadying, protective arm around Scout’s waist now, rubbing his back. “Sh...she does this to you?”

“No. No, this is degrading. Nothing like this.”

The man was licking the damp, gritty toes of Pauling’s boots now, and her expression had gotten caught between derisive amusement and contempt. “Stop. Empty your pockets, every _cent_ in your wallet.” He scrambled into obedience, and she kicked him, sharply, in the throat. “Not _here_ , you idiot. In the wet and the filth? Stupid fool. The back of my truck, and _do not touch it_ , or you will lick it clean from fender to bumper.”

“Mistress,” he muttered again, and shuffled on his knees across the parking lot, soaking wet and cold and filthy. Scout had retreated to the passenger side door when Pauling had kicked the man, and was intently concentrating on the side mirror, rubbing flecks of dust off the chrome with his fingertip. Noah just stepped backward, as the scarecrow-man dumped out his pockets, his wallet, coins bouncing and crumpled bills rustling on the metal bed of the truck.

Pauling came up, looked critically down her nose. “And the watch,” she pronounced, and the man jerked a gold-toned wristwatch off his wrist, dropped it next to the small pile of money. Pauling sniffed. “Fine. Leave. Never look at me again.”

He did. She didn’t watch as he crossed the parking lot, shut the back doors, and climbed into his van. It wasn’t until he pulled away that she picked up the money, sorted it deftly, and pulled out another wad of cash from her wallet. She thumbed through it quickly, and her expression brightened. All the ice and steel melted away, and she was just sweet, tiny Miss Pauling again, delighted.

“Oh! Finally! I have enough for that incubator I’ve had my eye on!” She clapped her leather gloved hands, laughed. "We have to make one more stop before we go home."

* * *

 

Scout usually sat in the middle, but wouldn’t, this time. He balled himself up on the opposite side of the bench seat from Pauling, who had climbed into the cab after she’d closed up the back gate of the truck.

She spoke first, sparing them both. “I’m so sorry, guys. I forgot...I had an appointment. It was private, I should have remembered. I didn’t mean to startle you both, but I had an obligation.”

Noah nodded, a little uncertain of finding the words. He still had a hand on Scout’s shoulder, not in the least because he was sitting by the passenger side door, clearly upset. Scout didn’t say anything.

Pauling continued. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Scout? Honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t really hurt him. I...well. I mean, I did, but only the way he wanted it. His name is Jerry, he owns the farm supply company, he’s giving me a deal on an incubator and some hatching eggs. He’s really nice, honestly, he’s got some wonderful purebred Rhode Island Reds due in the spring. For my chicken coop, I want to have baby chicks next year. It was all pre-agreed upon, I did what I was asked to, and I got paid for it. He was always the one in charge, he set the limits. He's retiring, moving out to Arizona, wanted to go out with a bit of a bang, I guess.”

“ _Why_.” Pauling winced visibly at the way he sounded hurt, betrayed.

“Noah, would you drive?” She clambered over Noah’s lap, scooted him over behind the wheel. Sat patiently next to Scout, though he hunched further away. Didn’t attempt to touch him, but pulled her gloves off. “Darling, some people need that. I know you don’t, I wouldn’t ever hurt you--either of you--not like that. Not unless you asked me to.”

Noah spoke up. “I’ve never seen you go...not all the way, like that. He really...with the licking? What’s the sex like if he doesn’t touch…?”

“No sex,” Pauling clarified. “Not what he wants. Look, you guys. Let me try and explain a few things. I know this is complicated, and it’s long past time we talked about it.”

She went on at length, patiently, kindly. Noah took the scenic route home. By the time they’d pulled into the driveway, Scout had uncurled to the point where he would hold her hand again, let her gently touch his knee.

He was glad, at the end of it, that he hadn’t had to kill anybody.


	56. heights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The White Spruce is not native to Oregon, but it is the provincial tree of Manitoba, where I am from, and it makes a lovely Christmas tree.  
> \- Prelude

Pauling could be kind of bossy sometimes, and Pauling wanted a Christmas tree. Pyro had high aesthetic ideals about what a Christmas tree should be. There was a crookedy little pine near the barn that Scout had thought was sort of sweet and probably good enough, but no. No, they had been trekking through the woods almost all day. Now it was nearly dark, and Pyro had hemmed and hawed about a Douglas Fir versus a Scotch Pine for an agonizingly cold hour, and Scout was freezing by the time he settled on one which was pointedly neither.

Then they had to haul it back through the forest. Scout was an urbanite to the core, and liked forests only in the abstract, would’ve liked them better if they’d been more like the parks that he’d always thought were forests. Flat ground. Cultivated trees. Paths. This forest was wild and brambly and difficult to navigate, and especially difficult to navigate with a hundred pounds of Christmas Tree, rigid and poky and nine feet long.

Things had gotten a little bit frosty between the two of them, and every iota of romance had drained out of the notion of picking and cutting down their first Christmas tree. There weren’t really Christmas trees in New Mexico. And the Badlands and what had happened in them didn’t bring out a lot of festivity. The best Christmas Scout remembered had been the one that he didn't actually remember, when he’d gotten blackout drunk and called his mother, incoherently in tears, to beg forgiveness for things he couldn’t talk about. Pyro had gently taken the phone away before he could say too much. Knowing he'd done it made him incredibly grateful not to remember it.

So that was a bit fucked up.

This was better, but Scout was still determined to mutter bad-temperedly the whole way home, so it was abundantly clear that he had not had a good time. It was mostly just irritable bickering, nothing serious, and he knew Pyro knew better than to listen to him.

“Better make Miss Pauling happy, at least, ‘least she didn’t have to put up with all _your_ bullshit, first tree ain’t big enough, second tree’s too fuckin’ wide, s’fuckin’ half a mile between the pair of ‘em and we walked back and forth lookin’ probably _eight times_ . Ain’t like I gotta screwy fuckin’ leg or nothin’ naw, don’t even worry about _that_ . An’ weren’t either one of ‘em even good enough in the end anyway, _not that you wanted my opinion_ .  Next year, you bring _Pauling_ , I don’t care how bossy she is or if the snow’s up to her goddamn waist, the tiny little _tyrant_ . Get her snowshoes. Or a _sled_ . Fuckin’...what’re they called. Tobaggan. First Christmas needs a perfect fuckin’ tree--my _ass_ . That is all _you_ with your ridiculous fuckin’ Normal Rockwell fetish. Norman Rockwell painted a lotta threeways, did he? Pauling would know, I sure don’t. Hell and goddamn, probably she’d’ve gone along with it, she gives a shit about all that stuff. Ain’t like you’d need her help liftin’ it. You’re strong as a goddamn ox, anyway, dunno why I need to help carry the damn tree. S’cumbersome as all hell. Maybe if you’d’ve brought _Pauling_ , would’ve been a good way t’tell the damn thing is too tall, vaulted ceilin’ or _not_ . Not like you listened t’me about _that_ either _._ An’ I got fuckin’...I dunno what the hell is this sticky crap? Sap? If it’s birdshit, I am gonna kick your ass, swear to god. Friggin’ pine, sick t’death of it already. Smells like the inside of Engie’s goddamn truck with that stupid godawful air freshener he always had, dumbass little pine tree. Pitch some gas on it, bring back some _real_ memories, an’ I’m tellin’ you…”

They broke the edge of the woods at the foot of the property, and Scout paused to get his breath, dropping the top end of the tree with a _whumff_ in the snow. His leg hurt and his feet were wet and his hands were raw and lightly chapped and sticky, because he’d lost the gloves Miss Pauling had gotten him. The house looked especially cozy and warm in the early December twilight, and Scout wanted a hot shower and to have a drink, probably rum and probably also eggnog but probably mostly rum. He also wanted to monopolize Miss Pauling before Pyro could get his hands on her and spend any more time on the dumb damn tree, because Scout was cranky and annoyed and wanted to be in a better mood before they did any decorating.

Probably a hot shower could happen concurrently with at least one of his other goals. Miss Pauling loved a hot shower. Maybe boozy eggnog would be enough to take the edge off his irritation with Pyro. Probably he could also use a shower.

“And _another_ thing…” he started up again, as Pyro started to drag the tree off towards the barn without him. Then stopped dead, and Scout nearly plummeted face first into the bristly blue-green needles what they were pretty sure was a White Spruce. “ _Pyro_ , come the _fuck_ on, man…”

“What’s Pauling doing up on the roof?”

Scout hadn’t seen her, the little dark shape up near the ridge, almost up at the peak of the roof, near the edge. He frowned, all of the irritability vanishing. “Huh. Gotta be Christmas lights. Christ, hope she’s nearly done, gonna be dark soon. Aw, she shouldn’t have gone ahead without us, told you we took too damn long with the fuckin’ tree.”

Pyro hefted his end, dropped it with a considerably heftier _flumph_ of soft, powdery snow. “Better go see if she needs help getting done, you know how she can get stubborn about this sort of thing. Fixated. Bit of a perfectionist, our Pauling.”

Scout had a very sarcastic laugh sometimes.

Pauling’s laugh as they approached was high, a little breathy. It sent a dark, unpleasant feeling up the curve of Scout’s spine, he squinted up at her. “About time you got back.” She laughed again, almost shrill, with an edge like broken glass.  “My, um. My l-ladder fell over. I...w-would one of you mind...put it back up? The wind blew it over. P-please?”

Pyro laughed, because Pauling was laughing, and she looked ridiculous, poised right at the edge of the roof, in her scarf and her earmuffs and her little leather work gloves.  Scout felt his back stiffen. “Oh, shit,” he muttered under his breath, and started scanning the ground for the ladder. “Pyro, knock it off.”

“Aww, c’mon, it’s a _little_ funny. Pauling, honey, how’re the Christmas lights going? Did you wan-- _ow_ ! _Christ_ , Scout, enough about the damn tree.”

Scout had punched him sharply in the ribs, whispered, “ _Stop_. Look. She’s stuck. If her ladder fell, why’s she right at the edge, right at the top? Ain’t fuckin’ safe, I bet she ain’t moved since it fell. Shit.” He approached the edge of the house, struck his foot on the ladder, buried in a cushion of deep, drifted snow. Old, wooden. From the damn barn, they didn’t own a ladder, hadn’t bought a new one yet. Well. They were going to have to, because yeah, this one was cracked, the old rungs had already been loose, they’d split off from the sides. The roof had needed to be reshingled when they’d first arrived, but Scout had climbed out onto it from the windows in the upstairs bedrooms. Which were locked. Okay.

“All right. Miss Pauling? Ladder’s busted. That’s okay. Hon, Pyro’s goin’ in an’ upstairs to open the bedroom window near you, an’ I’m gonna stay out here an’...” He trailed off, eyed the low hanging eave over the front porch. Eyed the distance across the steeply sloped roof, from the edge where Miss Pauling was clinging, miserable and silent to the nearer dormer window. “Mmm. Hm. Right. New plan. Yeah, I’m comin’ up, okay? Sit tight.”

Pyro blinked at this, grabbed Scout by the arm. “Uh, you sure you…” He glanced up at Pauling, who’d fallen starkly silent, pale and staring. He dropped his voice. “I mean...you’ve been on your feet all day, you limped the whole way back, I just ignored you because you were being a pain in the ass. So. Uh. Are you sure you…”

Scout glared at him, approached the corner of the house, below the overhanging porch roof. “Shut up. You are a goddamn clumsy fuck, an’ she is spooked all to hell, an’ sometimes you ain’t exactly gentle. I ain’t givin’ you shit about that, am I? And _also_ , you are _also_ a pain in the ass. I’ll be fine. Gimme a boost. An’ get the goddamn window open, soon as you can.”

Well, at least Pyro was as strong as a goddamn ox. And they’d been together a long time, worked together for longer, anything physical between them was fluid, second-nature. For whatever else had happened, in spite of whatever agony he’d been through, Scout had kept working right up to his very last day with RED, tired almost constantly, but never actually any weaker. Pyro had gotten a little tubby around the middle, just the tiniest bit...comfortable. Without flamethrowers and fuel tanks to run all over the place, he’d...settled....a bit. Just a bit. Scout had put on just enough weight to soften the bony ridges of his hips and ribs, but he’d also done almost a year of construction work. He probably hadn’t actually even needed the boost.

As soon as he was sure Scout had his footing, Pyro trotted up the front steps, vanished inside with a sharp slam of the door. Pauling flinched visibly.

Scout wasn’t afraid of heights, not in the slightest. He’d been told somewhere along the line that everybody was afraid of heights, but he’d laughed and said that was bullshit. Pauling, though. Poor, pretty thing, pale and shivering and wretched. He stopped about five feet from her. “Hey, Miss Pauling,” he said softly, gingerly lowering himself to sit on the rough shingles of the roof. Thankfully the slope of it was great enough that most of the snow had slid off.

“I’m so fucking stupid,” she whispered, tearfully now. He could see her fingers, clenched tightly through the leather of her gloves, one at the edge of the roof, one splayed flat on the ridge along the top. She’d cocked a knee up over the peak and looked painfully, profoundly uncomfortable, like she’d frozen when the ladder had fallen. That was probably exactly what had happened.

“Nah, honey. We were gone way too long. Y’ain’t hurt at all, are ya? Just got spooked?”

She nodded, tightly. Bit back a ragged sob and shuddered. Probably this was the first time Scout had ever actually seen Miss Pauling really frightened. Startled, occasionally. There’d been a thunderstorm over the summer that had made her skittish and she’d gone and hidden in the basement. But this was proper terror, edging up on hysterical panic, and Scout knew exactly what that looked like.

“Heights, huh? No one likes ‘em, far as I know. Can I come a bit closer? Won’t touch you, promise.”

She nodded again, but whimpered when the wood of the roof creaked slightly beneath his weight as he shifted closer. “Oh, _Jesus_.”

He stopped, held still again. “S’all right, just nails, rubbin’ an’ squeakin’ in the gaps in the wood. All right? I was up here all spring, Miss Pauling, did the whole damn roof, on accounta Pyro’d have burnt to a crisp, an’ obviously you ain’t wild about heights. Know that aboutcha now. Also, I am the best at roofin’, used to do it with my brothers over summer break. Could get a roof done in like an hour. We were awesome. Heh. Roofs.”

“I know, I remember.”

Scout nodded, grinned a little. “So don’t worry about me, okay. I’m fine. Friggin’ mountain goat, I ain’t ever fallen off a roof before, ain’t ever likely gonna. An’ you’re fine too. You’re gonna be fine, okay?”

“I’m fine if I have a ladder,” she mumbled. “It fell. The wind came up and it fell and I got stuck. I hate to get stuck.”

He heard the latch of the window, the nearer bedroom window. Then the rough grate as it slid up. “Yeah, that’s a bastard. Sorry we weren’t here, we got all caught up with the Christmas tree. S’back over by the barn. Pyro’s got the window open, didja hear? I’ma let him know you’re okay, all right?”

“Mmhmm. I can’t move.”

Scout nodded. “Yeah. No, I know exactly what that’s like. Hey, Pyro? You, uh, just wait there a minute, okay? We’re gonna take our time, no need to rush this.”

Muffled, around the corner of the window. “Uh huh. Yeah...umm. The sun’s going down. Just...um. Just saying.”

 _I fucking know that I am not a fucking idiot Pyro, Jesus Christ you gotta go carefully about this shit, times I wonder if you ever learned that. That ain’t fucking helpful, not in the least_. Not a word of that slipped out, nor affected his tone, still light and gentle. “Nah, we’re all right. Ain’t gonna take us nearly that long. Right, Miss Pauling? Hey, do you think I could take your hand? The nearer one? I know you don’t wanna let go of the edge.”

Her breath hissed through her teeth, a white, frosty ghost. “Mmm. Oh god this is so stupid. This never happens to me, this was _so stupid_. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Scout moved slowly, rested a hand on hers, felt the almost electric surge of tension in her fingers. “Oh! O-oh. Okay.” Then, her voice softening, shrinking, “Mm...okay.”

“Hey, halfway there. Aww, sweetheart. You're shaking like crazy. Mostly cold or mostly scared? Both, I guess. Baby, you are gonna need to let me get closer, or you're gonna need t'come to me. Can you try?"

She didn't say anything, hunching her shoulders and bowing her head for a long minute. Then, with a deep, shuddering sigh, she slowly started to move her knee, the one she had straddling the ridge of the roof. Halfway through the motion, as the nerves responded painfully to fresh movement, she crumpled and cried out, then started just sobbing, frantic and tiny little gasps. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” She managed to lift her head, her big green eyes red and teary. “Help. Please help.”

“Okay. Here, lemme.”

Miss Pauling was tiny. She’d never seemed tinier than she did right now. Pyro was strong as an ox, solid, and Scout knew him, trusted him. Knew that when he’d gotten a leg up onto the roof, he could also plant a foot on Pyro’s shoulder, and that there’d be a hand to boost him the rest of the way. Second-nature. He didn’t know Miss Pauling as well, not even after half a year of getting properly, physically acquainted with her. But he knew what it felt like to be trusted by someone who was frightened and vulnerable, even if it had been a long, long time since he’d been on that side of the equation. So, a single, fluid motion, letting her trust him.

She was still sobbing and frightened and shaking violently, but she was also halfway in his lap, her arms wrapped tight around his neck and her face buried in his shoulder. Scout wasn’t sure if she even noticed the short trip across the roof, to the open window.

He gently detached her, let her latch onto Pyro, who was waiting. Strong and solid and steady as he’d been for the last few years, like Scout had used to be. Once Pauling was safely indoors and bundled up in the sort of reassuring embrace that Pyro was an expert at, Scout ducked in after her, into the bedroom he shared with Pyro.

Put weight on his bad leg as he stepped down from the sill, carefully. He was fairly certain it was all right, but he’d misjudged the impact of a long day of cold and damp and it gave out painfully beneath him when he shifted his weight. He sighed and leaned back against the exterior wall. Pauling looked down and then started to bawl in earnest.

Pyro looked back and forth between the both of them, and sighed. “All right. Long day.”

* * *

 

It was Scout who tended to be domestic, and Pauling who ran the household, but when the mood took Noah, he was the most motherly out of the three of them.

Brusquely, he ran a hot bath for Scout, dumped in half a box of epsom salts and settled him in with a couple candles and a radio playing Christmas music over on the bathroom counter. Kissed him, told him he was a dummy and he'd have to stay off his stupid leg for a week. Scout grinned and told him to fuck off.

Pauling he bundled up in one of his warmest, largest sweatshirts, and nestled her down on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate that was actually mostly whiskey. Pauling had thanked him profusely for getting the tree and also the whiskey.

Pyro tidied up the living room, started a cheerful fire in the hearth, and popped a casserole that Scout had assembled earlier into the oven. Set a timer.

Retrieved Scout, helped him carefully down the stairs from the second floor, snuggled him down next to Pauling (already half asleep) with eggnog that was mostly rum.

Then he went in and dragged their first Christmas tree the rest of the way to the house. And, like Scout had predicted, it was about a foot and a half too tall.

So Pyro dragged it out to the barn, and sawed off the bottom two feet. He smiled to himself while he did it, though. He whistled "O Tannenbaum" as he gathered up the scrap wood. He knew better than to burn it inside, but he was going to need to destroy the evidence. Scout was going to be  _unbearably_ smug about his heroic rescue. Scout was rarely smug about anything, anymore. There were glimpses, though. Sometimes, when it mattered, Scout could get his shit together. And he deserved to be a little smug about it. Pyro found himself looking forward to it immensely, seeing him grin and preen and letting Pauling fawn all over him. But there was no need to give him the satisfaction of being right about the dumb damn tree.

 


	57. ash

Between the two of them Scout was the only one who really knew how Noah got around fire. Miss Pauling had thought she had. She’d seen him retreat to the parlor and stoke up a huge fire on days he was frustrated or sad or sometimes just because, and their bonfires were all-day affairs because of how obsessive Noah was over them, and how he had never gone back into the house until it was completely ash.

Miss Pauling had thought she’d known, and so when he had disappeared when her back was turned as they made last checks on the truck’s supplies, the afternoon of the day smoke had started painting the sky above the forest, she hadn’t thought much of it. He’d probably gone back inside for something.

Except, he hadn’t. And except, he wasn’t in the house, or in the barn. And the smoke was getting blacker, and Scout was starting to panic. “He’s in the forest,” he kept saying, “fuck, fuck me I shoulda goddamn known, I shoulda—oh, _God_ …”

Pauling had to grab him with both hands to keep him from going to the forest himself. “He wouldn’t just walk off into the forest, Scout,” she tried to tell him. “He’s been doing fire drills with us for weeks, he’s not stupid—”

“No, he ain’t stupid, just he’s fuckin’ crazy, Miss Pauling, don’t tell me you don’t remember the forest fires what happened when we was on the team still! Pyro _started_ those an’ both times he fuckin’ d—he died out there. I dunno if it was the fire or the smoke or if a goddamn tree fell on him or what but I didn’t see him again ‘til he respawned, an’ don’t talk to me about what he’d do or not do ‘cuz you weren’t there an’ you don’t know how he gets an’ he ain’t got control’a himself when it comes to fire!”

Now Miss Pauling was starting to panic.

 

* * *

 

They watched the forest in shifts, or that had been the plan. What really happened was after about an hour of wandering the house trying to distract herself, Miss Pauling found where Scout had made his post on the window-seat in her room, the one that overlooked the forest, and curled up against him. He was warm and familiar and just as afraid as she was, probably more, and she just really wanted to hold onto someone now. He pulled her against him and fingercombed her hair as he watched the smoke and the treeline.

A little while later, when he had to get up and move around some lest his bad leg go numb again, Pauling kept watch on her own for another hour, too distracted to do anything but stare out the window. Not long after Scout came limping back in and sank down to bury his face against her chest, breathing raggedly. She spoke to him quietly, of nothing important, and rubbed his back until the hitched breaths smoothed out.

It was a long two days, and the smoke never seemed to change. At night they could see the light of the flames.

The day the smoke did change, it changed in the way Miss Pauling hadn’t dared to hope it would: _away._ The wind began to push it back toward the mountains, right as the sun started to set. She woke Scout, sleeping pressed against her, to show him, and he had barely blinked the sand out of his eyes before he cussed and pointed out a small, ashy figure standing at the treeline that had eluded Pauling’s notice.

Limp or not, Scout could still pour the speed on when he really wanted to. He was down the stairs and out the door almost before Pauling could get to her feet.

 

* * *

 

“You _stupid fuck_! You _idiot!_ ”

Pauling got there after the initial relieved hug, if the ash smearing Scout’s front and cheek were any indication. The only word she had to describe Noah, as Scout vividly lost his shit at him, was sheepish. He was hunched up a little, eyes downcast. His usual hat and hoodie combo was missing, leaving him in jeans and a t-shirt. He was _covered_ in soot and ash and what of his skin she could make out was an angry red. More than a little of his hair was singed. “I know,” he kept saying quietly as Scout ranted. “I know. Yeah. Yes. I’m sorry. I came back as soon as I could manage…”

Something about the way he said that last took the wind out of Scout, and he deflated enough that Miss Pauling could edge in sideways. “Come inside,” she said firmly, taking Pyro by the wrist. “God, we should probably hose you off outside first, but come on. I’m probably going to start crying as soon as I get a good look at you and I don’t want to do it out here.”

She was absolutely right. As soon as they got him into the bathroom and helped him peel his burned, ashy, burr-smothered clothes off the waterworks started, and they hadn’t even started to fill the bath yet. Both Pauling and Scout were smeared with ash before they even started sponging Pyro off, and the bathwater was nearly black when they drained it. Pyro came out clean and looking even worse for it with the harsh divide between the burnt and unburnt. He made a weak, unpleasant joke about skin cancer, and this time it was Scout that started cursing and pawing at his eyes.

That night the storm that the smoke had been hiding broke, a monster of a storm, one that sent the windows rattling. They stuffed Pyro with enough food and water to make him ill, doused him in aloe, heard him apologize enough times to make _them_ feel guilty. He was still at it when they bullied him onto the couch and took up residence on either side of him and put on one of those overblown high-art movies he liked, with popcorn and hot chocolate. The only way they got him to shut up was when Scout started kissing him halfway through the film, and Pauling’s hand found its way to his thigh shortly after, and the tape had hit its end and rewound long before they got done expressing their relief that he was safe.

And it was great, except for the fact that their hot chocolate had gone cold by the time they were finished.


	58. albertson's

There was only the one grocery store in town, a tiny Albertson's. It wasn't much. It had bread and milk and cheese and meat, and admittedly in the summer it had some of the best fruit Scout had ever tasted, but in the end it was still just a grocery store. Scout didn't particularly care about it one way or the other; usually Pyro went with Pauling to get groceries, since he was better for carting bags around and he could read Scout's handwriting on his ingredients lists. Even Scout couldn't always manage that.

But Pyro had managed to get the flu last week, and he was still a lethargic, snotty mess that didn't want to get out of bed, and Scout wanted to poke around for new dinner ideas anyway. So he and Miss Pauling piled into the truck and headed off, on a bright April day, and they talked about whether or not chickens would be a good addition to the farm (Pauling wanted them, thought they would be charming; Scout wasn't a big fan of birds). By the time they got to the Albertson's it had warmed up enough that Pauling shrugged out of her jacket, and Scout wolf-whistled at her as she did. She rolled her eyes and waved him off, but on their way inside she definitely reached over and squeezed his ass.

It was gonna be a good day.

Soup, that's what he'd make for dinner. You gave sick people soup, right? Conventionally sick people. Pyro got sick maybe once a year at most and before now it had always been an exercise in stress and paranoia. After the first few days of it this time, though, with both Pauling and Scout there, it became abundantly clear that Pyro was milking the hell out of the attention he was getting. Scout's last interaction with him had ended with Scout unceremoniously dumping a fresh box of tissues on his lap and telling him he'd bring his gross infectious ass some peppermints, and Pyro had made a face and said he wanted wintergreen mints instead. Scout had stared at him, then gently pulled out one of the tissues from the box and dropped it on Pyro's face.

So: soup. Chicken soup. Scout's mother used to make chicken soup when one of them was sick, a cheap and easy meal without feeling like either one. They made their way through the store, checking things off the list and talking about nothing, until they reached the deli. "It's not quite a deli," Miss Pauling said as they turned the corner. "It's more like a proper butcher shop, they partnered up with the one here in town. It saves a trip, and you get better meat."

"Yeah? Pyro said once his dad had'ta work in a butcher shop, before they got filthy stinkin' rich and all. I ain't even been in one in ages."

As they came up to it he sort of remembered why. Through the glass display cases the meats were all elegantly arranged and neatly organized, but it was still _meat_ , raw and red and bloody. It wasn't that Scout couldn't deal with the sight of it, he did all the cooking for crying out loud, but there was just ... there was an awful lot of it at once. And the chopping blocks and stainless-steel tables behind the counter were nothing, really, like the makeshift operating rooms he'd gotten used to, but the discomfort they roused in his gut was still very real.

But it was fine. Scout had it under control. They just had to get a chicken and then they could head back, and Scout would make dinner and Pyro would remember what an amazing boyfriend he had. So he ambled up to the counter, glancing around the case in search of wherever they kept the whole chickens. As he was looking, a voice came. "Good afternoon! Can I help you?"

"Yeah, yeah, hey, you got--"

Scout looked up. Froze. Felt something in the back of his mind just. Snap apart.

The man standing behind the counter was tall, narrow-framed. He was an older gentleman, clean-shaven with graying hair, and a small pair of spectacles sat on his nose. His white uniform had a splatter of blood on it.

The man standing behind the counter was not Medic. Even Scout could not have mistaken the two, similarities and all, and to top it off the butcher smiling at him had spoken in a decidedly American accent. It was probably this last that kept him upright at all, instead of letting his suddenly-shaking legs give out from under him. They might anyway, they had started shaking so much. His hands, too.

A sharp, shooting pain seized his chest, his pulse had taken off without him, he couldn't think, he couldn't _think,_ he couldn't _move._ He had to move, get away, run, bolt, oh, God--

"Scout?" someone said, and something touched his arm.

All the terrified energy that had been coiling in him went off like a mousetrap, sending him leaping sideways with a yell. Of course he landed on his shit leg. Of course he crashed straight into a display of cookies and Easter candy. He brought it all down with him, didn't hear the butcher's muttered _holy hell_ , didn't hear Miss Pauling shout. He could hardly hear anything, his blood was pounding in his ears, his breathing had ramped up like he'd been racing. Race he did. He scrambled to his feet, heedless of the disaster he'd caused, and ran. Just ran.

Thing was shit legs didn't make for great running, and that had been the point all along, hadn't it. Probably Miss Pauling should have known better than to chase him down and grab him. But that was what she did. It was a damn fucking fine thing Scout had had _don't fight girls_ impressed upon him from a very young age, or the scuffle at the front of the Albertson's would have been a lot worse. As it was, Miss Pauling managed to get hold of his hand and his shoulder, forced him to look at her. "Scout! Scout, please, _please_ stop, what's wrong?"

"L--let, leggo, lemme go I can't--can't be here I gotta, Miss Pauling let _go_ , oh my God--"

She did not let go, but she did loosen her grip, and started herding him out of the store. Good. Yes. That was fine, that was exactly what needed to happen. "God, you're trembling, come on. Come on, here's a bench, sit."

Scout did not sit so much as he collapsed, and less because he wanted to stop than his legs were sure to fail him if he tried to go much further. He wrapped his arms around himself, tried to shrink down, wished his leg would stop hurting. The edges of his vision were blurry smears, worsening as he gulped down the spring air too quickly. Miss Pauling said his name again, more softly, and touched the back of his hand. In a jerky motion he twisted his wrist to grab her fingers, holding on for dear life. "We have to go," he muttered. "We, we gotta--we hafta go we can't stay here, where's the truck? Where's the truck?"

"Shh, hey, no, it's okay. Everything's okay. What happened in there?"

Scout opened his mouth, closed it again. Shook his head. Held onto Pauling's hand tighter.

 

* * *

 

It was another hour before Scout felt like he could walk without help. He'd had to use Miss Pauling as a crutch to the truck, and holding his tongue when she went back inside to apologize for him and pay for the groceries was an act of phenomenal willpower. By the time she came back he had locked both the doors, and jolted out of his fetal position with a breathless yelp when she knocked on the glass.

After that they'd left, finally. Finally. They had driven in silence around the town for a bit before Miss Pauling pulled into an empty lot beside an abandoned-looking building. "Um," she started, killing the engine, "feeling better?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I'm ... gettin' there."

"Can we talk about whatever that was? ... Scout."

Well. He couldn't fucking tell her, but he had to say _something_. "Just. S'a panic ... thing. Attack. Happens sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

"Sometimes."

She sighed, looking at him. Took his hand in both of hers and rubbed his fingers with her thumb. "You'd ... look, I know I'm not Pyro. I'm not even sure if it would do you any good. But if you want to tell me ... I don't know, anything. You can. You know that, right?"

"Yeah," Scout lied.


	59. ragtime

Twice in one day was a rarity, even in Pauling’s extremely limited experience with Pyro’s fits of rage.

She was behind Pyro, in the corner of the porch. She'd been painting the railing, because she couldn't reach high enough to paint the posts and she didn't like ladders. She'd gone a little pale when the paint can had gotten kicked over, because Pyro was between her and the door into the house, as well as the stairs down from the porch.

It was a beautiful afternoon. It was a beautiful spring day, and in spite of the events of that morning, they had all calmed down. Pyro had flipped a table covered in homemade pancakes and syrup and charmingly mismatched thriftstore dishes over in the middle of breakfast, in the middle of the freshly whitewashed dining room. Pauling hadn’t heard him ask her to pass the butter, and she’d bolted when Scout had told her to. Shortly after he had darted out the door, slammed it shut behind him, and expertly wedged a chair under the handle. Sat in it.

“Sometimes you can’t talk him down,” he’d explained, heaving a big breath and shaking his head. The door slammed with the impact of Pyro’s shoulder on the other side of it, and Scout jumped, but there wasn’t another assault. Just smashing and swearing from inside. Scout listened a while longer, then sighed. “Sometimes you can back him out of it, he doesn’t _wanna_ do it, an’ he knows that, an’ he’s still in there. I gotta teach you...man. I gotta teach you a lotta shit about him, ‘cuz it took me ages to learn. An’ also I gotta teach you all the ways I know of t’block a door. _Usually_ he won't kick a door down. D’you know the trick with pennies?”

It had been an hour before he’d been snapped back into remorse and had cleaned the whole dining room on his own. Pauling had pulled over another chair and small table and she and Scout had played a quiet game of gin rummy, until there was a sheepish knock on the door behind him.

“You done?” Scout called over his shoulder, not glancing up from the hand of cards he had. He lowered his voice. “An’ you gotta be careful, because sometimes--an’ not _often_ , but often enough y’gotta be careful--sometimes he tries t’trick you. An’ also, gin. You are terrible at cards, Miss Pauling.”

Muffled, through the door, “I’m really sorry, Scout. Miss Pauling, I’m sorry.” A long pause. “I...uh, I cleaned up. Best as I could, I’ll put the legs back on the table.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

And that had been that. And now they were painting the porch, and it was a beautiful spring day, and they were playing old records, ragtime, on the Victrola that Noah had found in the barn, dragged up into the foyer of the house. A good day, a nice day, they’d come back from the bad beginning of it.

Then Scout had absently pulled the can of primer just a little bit out of Noah’s reach, just as he was bending down to dip his brush in it.

There were different ways Pyro got angry. Sometimes it was slow, like the embers of a fire. Low and dull and dangerous, but passive, only harmful if handled. Sometimes he flashed into rage and then died right back down after a brief flare, like a match. Sometimes he just exploded into burning and stayed burning, like napalm. Ragtime still played in the background, incongruent now.

“Scout, what the _fuck_.” Pyro kicked the can, sent it splattering over the raw, scraped bare wood of the deck beneath their feet. It had taken nearly a week to scrape all the old paint off, but it had been wonderfully satisfying to see the weathered gray covered with fresh, new white.

Scout stopped, straightened. Pauling could see his face over Pyro’s shoulder, the way his jaw had set, the way his eyes were sad, resigned.  “...seriously?”

“Are you fucking deaf? Stupid? You are the most _inconvenient_ person I’ve ever fucking met, yes _seriously_.”

Pauling caught Scout’s eye over Pyro’s shoulder. His back was to her, and she was intensely grateful for that, but she’d frozen, trapped. Trying not to look frightened, because she’d made him worse before, by being frightened. She just hoped he wouldn’t remember she was there. But Pyro turned and she quailed. “Oh, you scared of me? Too _fucking_ right.” He started towards her, and Scout caught him by the arm.

“Pyro, do _not_.” They were at close quarters, paint seeping onto the ground, a slow rivulet oozing its way down the steps. Then, quieter, like he hoped Pauling wouldn’t hear. “...Noah. Man, come on. I’m fuckin’ tired, man, please.”

“ _Fuck ‘_ you’re tired’, I’m tired of _you_.” Pyro swung back around, threw a punch from the shoulder. Pauling flinched, away from the inevitable crack of it connecting, but it didn’t come.

Scout was still fast. Scout still had reflexes honed by a lifetime of the desire not to be beaten to death. And Scout occasionally surfaced, peeked out of the cracks in the shell of himself. He’d sidestepped the fist Pyro had fired at his throat. Caught him by the arm again. “I told you to _stop_.”

Pyro snarled, hunched his shoulders up, and Pauling cowered in the corner. Roared. “ _NO._ ”

“Fuckin’ _fine_. On your own damn fool head, then.” Scout grinned now, jackal. Tightened his grip on Pyro’s forearm, yanked him bodily off balance, to land with a grunt on his face, a heavy thud of his torso on the creaky old wood, the wind knocked out of him.

Sometimes Pyro could be talked down. Sometimes he couldn’t. Sometimes you needed to beat the crap out of him.

Scout had already stepped over his gasping partner, held a hand out and beckoned to Pauling, who knew to move when it was important. She slipped past him, slammed the front door, and he turned as he heard it lock. Grinned again. “Pyro, you knock it the fuck off. Scared the shit outta poor Miss Pauling, got fuckin’ paint everywhere, you cut it out  _now_.”

Pyro was clambering to his feet, breathing harsh, ragged. He would have been breathing fire if he could, instead he’d bonked his nose and it was bleeding, and he was spitting blood instead. “You shit, you piece of shit, I’ll fucking kill you fucking goddamn fucking scrawny _useless_ faggot _cripple_.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Scout’s knees were bent, he knew better to trust his weight to his bad leg, he kept his left braced behind him. Pyro lunged, missed. He was always going to miss. Pyro was a brute. Scout was an artist. As Pyro staggered, Scout had him by the shoulder, shoved him, sent him sprawling down the stairs, to land with an infuriated howl in the dirt. “Fuckin’ _rich kids_ , I swear t’ _Christ_.”

Scout had a bit of a sore spot, where people who thought fighting was _fun_ were concerned. There was a certain sort of person, a certain kind of young, rich, _cocky_ fucking _asshole_ , who had tended to roll up into the neighbourhood where he had lived with his family. Looking for a fight. Fights didn’t have consequences for stupid fucking rich kids, with their doctors and their money and their available, fawning parents. Scout grew up in a neighbourhood where you tried to win a fight because the price of losing was probably more than the people you loved could pay. Fighting was necessary, it was not fun. Scout had long outgrown looking for fights. Fights generally found him, though, and he knew how to handle that.

Pyro was not that sort of person. Pyro got mad and he couldn't help it, and he didn’t think it was fun. He hadn’t used to, anyway, these days Scout wasn’t sure of a lot of what he’d used to know about Pyro. He did know that he was strong as an ox. Bullheaded, ferocious, brutal, stubborn. Clumsy, dumb fuck in a fight, overconfident. Use his own weight against him, let him tire himself out, because he had utterly no economy of movement.

Scout took the stairs at an easy leap, landed carefully, the way he’d learned to, when his leg started acting up mid-match. Back on RED. “You done?” He approached carefully, Pyro had hunched himself up on the ground, was breathing heavily, getting his wind back for a second time.

Well, Pyro was fast too sometimes, and strong. He snarled, animal, shot a hand out and caught Scout by the ankle. The bad ankle, a bad idea. Scout kicked it away reflexively, heard a crack. And all the fight went out of him, when Pyro shrieked, curled up and thrashed back onto his knees.

Scout shoved him again, then sat on him. Dropped all of his weight right in the center of Pyro’s back. Scout knew about centers of gravity and centers of pressure and leverage and the ins and outs of human anatomy. He couldn’t have named any of them when asked, but he could pin a man who outweighed him by about a hundred pounds to the ground, if he had to. Easily. “Okay. Shit. I didn’t wanna do that. Now you _stop_ .” He grunted, as Pyro lurched bodily underneath him, then Scout put his hands on his shoulders and pinned him tighter. “ _Please_.”

Pyro just howled at him again. Scout sighed.

It took another five minutes for Pyro to stop. Scout had been tired at the start of it, he was exhausted now. “Done?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Yeah.” Muffled, a little sniffly. “‘m sorry. Scout, fuck, ‘m so sorry. I didn’t...d-did I hurt you? Miss Pauling?”

“Nah. Your hand okay? I kicked you.”

“Just bruised, I think, not broken.”

Scout let him up. “You scared the shit outta Miss Pauling,” he reprimanded, gently.

Pyro sighed, brushing dirt off his hoodie, wincing as he twisted his wrist. “I always do. I’ll apologize. I just...I’m gonna need some space.”

“Man, you gotta…shit, I dunno. You gotta let me know when that stuff’s comin’ on ya, I couldn’t stand how you’d feel if you ever hurt her.”

Pyro nodded, tentatively went in for a hug. “I know. I’m sorry. Thank you.” Scout obligingly hugged him, ruffled his hair. Pyro always got a little vulnerable, after a particularly bad spell. Pyro had slipped a hand into his belt, at the small of his back. Apologetically. The hand that squeezed his ass did so a little more than just apologetically. “I forget about how you’re kind of a badass, sometimes. It's sexy as hell.”

Scout grinned, absolutely did not blush, not even a little. “Aw. Fuck off.”


	60. constellations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pre-Hold Still.

So they’d been together for probably three, four months, right? Was that long enough for what Scout wanted to say? Heck. Scout didn’t have any damn idea, the last person he’d dated had dumped him three weeks in and probably she’d been right to. Scout had been more of a gabby disrespectful jackass then. Not that he wasn’t, still, but he liked to think that that was part of his charm. Either way, it had been three or four months and Pyro had stuck around.

That was a good sign, right?

Anyway, how it happened was pretty normal for Scout. He thought about it for an entire day, and then forgot about it, and then remembered it again after he and Pyro had clambered up onto the roof together to look at the stars. Scout never got tired of them, seeing as how you only got smog in Boston, and Pyro just liked to be outside without having to drown himself in protective clothing. This also meant it was very easy to coax him out of his shirt, when the night air was warm enough.

Tonight it was. Warm, that is. And Scout wound up not really looking at the stars but at the constellations Pyro’s freckles made across his skin, and that was just as good.

They’d curled up together and talked idly and fell silent, listening to the coyotes howl and the crickets sing, and so of course hands had started drifting and finding, leading the way. Twenty minutes later Pyro was on his back and Scout was making a game of trying to kiss him from most freckles to least, and somewhere in the middle of it all Scout remembered what he’d wanted to say, and so he said it.

He’d hoped to get it back in kind. That was all you could do, right? Hope? He’d felt pretty sure about it, too, that he would. Or at least some kind of positive reaction, even if Pyro wasn’t that far along yet.

Scout hadn’t wanted Pyro to freeze up, very suddenly, and nudge Scout away to give him a wary look. “What?”

Aw, shit. “I … said I love you.”

He saw Pyro’s throat shift as he swallowed, his eyes dart sideways as he wet his lips and sat all the way up. Aw, hell. Shit. Scout grimaced. “Uhh. Freakin’ … sorry. I guess.”

“No, um.” Pyro ran a hand through his hair, his gaze still pointedly fixed off in the distance. “I … mmn. I’ve never had a guy say that to me before.”

“Jesus, Pyro, we’ve been screwin’ goin’ on four months now, I’m pretty sure we even been datin’ proper by now, what did you think was going on?”

“Shut up, I know,” Pyro muttered, pulling his knees to his chest. “I wasn’t expecting it.”

Scout watched him, for once in his life having trouble finding his tongue. Jumping off the roof suddenly seemed like a viable response. “So, uh. I mean, I guess you ain’t, ain’t—that it ain’t mutual.”

That got Pyro to look at him again, his face screwed up, too many emotions fighting one another at once for Scout to decide which one he was trying to convey. Pyro wet his lips again and said, “That’s not …” And then nothing. Now Scout was just getting frustrated. Pyro groaned, burying his face in his hands. “… Does your family know you’re dating me?”

What. “Well … no, on account’a my ma’s catholic an’ it’d break her heart an’ my brothers … I dunno about my brothers. No.”

“What would they do if they found out?” Scout squinted at him. “What would they do?”

“I guess … I dunno. My ma’d be real upset. One’a my other brothers already got caught with a guy and she was damn upset, lots’a cryin’ an’ yellin’. I mean it turned out okay, he still visits. My brothers give him a whole lotta shit, mostly.”

About halfway through his answer, Pyro had started grinning that mirthless smile he had, the one he couldn’t seem to control ever. “But they wouldn’t do anything really bad.”

“I guess. I don’t think so.”

Pyro laughed, the sort of laugh that made Scout’s skin prickle uncomfortably. “When my parents found out I was seeing a man they threw me out of the house and burned everything I left behind.”

“They— _what?_ ”

“Yeah. Before I joined the team. So that was it for parents for me. I’m pretty sure my father’d figure out a way to get me hung if I went back.” He cleared his throat. “That was about a year and a half ago now, I guess.”

“Jesus, Pyro,” Scout muttered. “I’m—”

“Don’t,” Pyro sighed. The wry smile was gone. “Please don’t. I don’t like thinking about it, I don’t like pity. I earned all of it. And they never liked how I turned out anyway, with the whole… artist, albino, pyromaniac thing. It was just the last straw.”

Scout gnawed his lip, watching him. Slowly, carefully, he reached out and touched Pyro’s pale wrist. “I like how you turned out.”

Pyro glanced at him, then down at his hand. His face softened, and he shifted to entwine their fingers. “Thank you,” he said, and then, drawing Scout’s hand up to press his cheek against it, “I love you, too.”


	61. silhouettes

“I didn’t even know if he liked men when I started going after him,” Noah said, daubing another layer of violet onto Pauling’s nail. He was holding her wrist steady, though probably he didn’t need to, really. Noah had very steady hands. “I kind of assumed he didn’t, because, you know.”

“You wouldn’t guess by looking at him.”

“Never. And here’s me, and I’m just this big anonymous monster in a suit with a crush and a grudge against my parents. I could’ve been a girl, for all he knew. I could’ve been a sack of potatoes.”

Pauling laughed. Her hand was resting on his thigh as she sat across from him on the nice little ottoman they’d picked up to finish off the sitting room. All week, they’d worked on it, mostly just Pauling and Noah, and it had paid off in a gorgeous sunlit dream of a place. Now afternoon light streamed in, the day dying slowly, and Pauling had asked Noah how he’d gotten together with Scout in the first place. “So it was the Fourth of July,” he went on, “and I was drunk, and _he_ was drunk, and he started hassling me about the mask. So I was like, fine, and I took it off and he just _stared,_ I swear to you. Like he’d seen God,” he finished smugly, refreshing his brush. “Do you want anything but the plain purple? I can do a couple designs, my sister showed me.”

“No, thank you. So then what?”

“Well. We fucked, is what happened,” Noah said, still smirking. “I barely remember it, I think I got him into bed with a terrible artist pick-up line. He’d remember. And he was terribly weird around me for the next week, like he couldn’t decide if he regretted it or not. But a few days later he came up to me with a six-pack and asked if I just wanted to talk. Not about the sex, just about anything. So we did that.” He moved on to Pauling’s other hand. “We did it all backwards. Later he told me he’d never even wanted to sleep with someone he didn’t know before, just people he’d dated for a while already. So he felt weird about it and decided he needed to play catch-up.”

Pauling laughed again. “But it answered the ‘is he gay’ question.”

“Too right. Hell. I thought he was only into men, after that. I knew he’d flirt with you but I sort of thought it was to keep up appearances … I never asked him about it because I sort of wanted him to be.” Noah snorted. “Like, I felt better about myself because at least I was straighter than he was. Stupid.” He exhaled. “So that’s what I thought for a really long time. He never even looked at anyone else the whole time we were together on RED, it never occurred to me he might like both. I was really surprised when you two started doing your thing.”

The room was growing dark; the sun was fading away, but the nearest lamp was out of reach. Noah squinted and kept painting. “I hope you weren’t jealous,” Pauling said softly.

“Sort of. But it was because he wasn’t afraid of you.”

He’d finished both hands, now, and Pauling squeezed his leg gently before she looked his work over. “Thank you,” she said, pleased, and scooted closer to him until they were sitting side-by-side. Noah heaved a sigh and leaned against her.

“I got lucky is what happened,” he said, barely past a whisper. “He’d just … I think he’d love anyone who’d love him back and that just turned out to be me. He always deserved a lot better.”

“Noah, don’t, please don’t.”

He said nothing. Pauling sighed. Her nails were still damp, but nail polish washed out, and so she carefully nudged and prodded and shifted until she’d gotten him on his back, his head in her lap. She laid a hand on his cheek, stroked his hair, kissed his hand when he reached up to her. “I love you.”

He exhaled and tried to smile, and levered himself up on his elbow to kiss her. And it was dark and warm and eventually he was all the way upright again, had pulled her into his lap to kiss her more properly, and it was good.

* * *

 

Neither of them had noticed Scout lingering in the hall, eyeing their silhouettes, where he had been since Pyro had finished Pauling’s nails. The dinner he’d come to get them for was getting cold. It only vaguely occurred to him to care, as he watched the two people he loved getting along just fine without him.


	62. son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly follows ["infection."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662442/chapters/6033386)
> 
> An arc, _"shattered,"_ follows. Trigger warnings include: mention of self-harm, discussion/threat of suicide, slurs.

Fresh, the wound in his hand had really been something. Scout had been filled up with clarity and purpose and red hot pain, and it had been like everything made sense again. Scout had gotten meticulously careful about not hurting himself. Maybe it had been the wrong approach.

His Ma had always given him hell for not thinking things through. Scout didn’t actually know where the fucking vet lived, just that it was down the highway. About ten minutes. By truck. Hopefully eastward down the highway, but maybe not. It had been fifty/fifty, and he had just needed to _do_ something.

And he had a broken arm and a headache and disinfected and bandaged or not, the new gash he’d torn in his right hand still throbbed with every pulse of his heart. And it was the end of May. And it was getting hot, the sun having been well near its zenith when he’d crept back out of the bathroom, determined. To do what, he didn’t actually know. But he hadn’t been determined in a long time. And he wanted Miss Pauling back, so that seemed like as good a place to start as any.

And the secret, tentative slits in his skin, in the ones he’d made just as an experiment. Sitting in the barn, staring at the ugly gash in his palm, then fumbling through the tool bench until he found a small package of single edged razors. He’d been scraping paint off the windows, a week ago, chipping away old flakes of white, like snow. A new razor, perfectly sharp. And the lines already etched in his palm, made just that little bit deeper. Dark red arcs, perfect. It was like letting something out. Like a place where all his stress and anxiety could seep out of him. He had to set a limit on it, he had to say only three times. Catholics, everything in threes. Sign of the Cross. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Ritual. One for Pauling, one for Pyro, one for him. Trinity.

God, he hadn’t prayed in years. Hadn’t set foot in a church since Christmas. It had never helped like this did.

Pyro got to have fire. Miss Pauling had chickens. Scout could have blood. They didn’t have to know, he had been hiding shit like this for years, it was practically second nature. They were his hands, anyway. They wouldn’t understand how this sort of thing could possibly help. Truthfully he didn’t either, but that was another thing about Catholicism. You didn’t ask questions. A lot of it was mysteries.

His broken arm was the wrong kind of hurt. Dull, persistent. The kind that reminded him of all the long hours he’d spent, curled up in some godforsaken corner of the hell that was the Badlands, next to Pyro, not that it did any good or helped at all to have his hair stroked or his hand held. Pinned down by pain like a moth under glass. Killed by it, chloroformed to death so he’d stay intact for future study.

Scout clenched his right hand, the one not hindered by the cast. The one with the pain he had made himself, chosen mastery over. Drove his fingertips into his palm, as hard as he could. Cleared his head. Kept walking.

He’d always been a stubborn bastard. He would almost certainly be dead, otherwise.

There was a bright red smudge in the middle of his wrapped palm and it was over an hour later, when he finally spotted the truck. Not parked, but coming up the highway behind him, he’d heard it before he’d seen it, with the familiar, tell-tale rattle of the loose exhaust pipe in the back. Scout had been meaning to fix that for ages, he’d do it as soon as they got back, broken arm or not, it was a simple fix. Maybe he’d leave it. There weren’t many cars that came down this stretch of highway, but he could hear them all from the house, and it helped to be able to know when it was the truck approaching.

Fuck, but he had been going the wrong way. He just wouldn’t have stopped, either. God.

He stopped now, slumped against a telephone pole at the side of the highway, unexpectedly dropping to the gravel shoulder that bordered up on the pavement. Maybe he hadn't eaten anything in about a day. He’d been too mad to even touch the dry toast or rubbery eggs that Pyro had made, and Pyro hadn’t pushed him to eat, like Miss Pauling would’ve. Maybe his leg was killing him, and the heat of the day, and the things Pyro had said, stuck in his chest like knives. Miss Pauling never said shit like that.

Miss Pauling, thank Christ for Miss Pauling. He had no idea what he was supposed to say. Maybe nothing. Maybe she would just climb out of her truck and fix everything again, because of course that was what Miss Pauling did. He needed her. They both did, him and Pyro both, she had always been a pressure release valve. Scout would bring her back and apologize for all his stupid, self-destructive bullshit and Pyro could apologize for chasing her off and she would cry a little and then laugh and smile and kiss them both and they would all be fine.

It had taken a long time to come to terms with the fact that it could be three of them, and that that was okay. It wasn’t wrong to love the both of them, how could that be wrong? Maybe now he could tell her about everything. She’d only asked once or twice, never pushed it. It had been a year and a half. She could maybe have fixed everything a lot sooner than that, but that was so long since passed and there was no point in dwelling on it. She deserved to know. Scout could find a way to tell her, maybe that would help make up for some of it.

It would explain how he was too broken for just one person, that it wasn’t fair to expect Pyro to handle his perpetual neediness on his own. Pyro had his own shit to deal with. Pyro got angry, and he was right to. Miss Pauling didn’t get angry. Or...well, she had. Last night, in the barn, god she had been angry. Mostly the scared kind of angry. Scout sort of remembered her saying that, that she was scared, that they all were. He hadn’t been, actually. Probably Pyro hadn’t either. So scared she’d completely lost her shit at the both of them. They’d really fucked up, and she’d been right to be mad. Miss Pauling never got mad.

Fuck, oh _fuck_. Fingers digging into his palm again, pressing through layers of fabric, so he could feel slowly seeping, warm dampness beneath them. Had to stop, she’d see. He’d just keep that hand closed, until he could rebandage it. He got unsteadily to his feet as the truck approached, shadowed from the back.

Miss Pauling wasn’t driving it.

It stopped anyway and the door popped open, bounced on its hinge. This was someone Scout had never met before, but recognized immediately. Knew the old, weathered face because he’d seen it last night, setting his arm in a wrenching flash of agony that had yanked him up out of a tranquil blackness, then dropping him back down into it. “Get in, son. I did good work on you, pro bono. I’m not keen to see it undone because you walk yourself to death in a ditch on the side of the road.”

“I ain’t your son,” Scout retorted immediately, angrily and on instinct. Wary and frightened and defensive and acutely aware that he was in no shape for another fight.

Gil squinted at him, scornfully. “I expect you ain’t anybody’s, with an ungrateful attitude like that. Bet your parents’d be ashamed. Get in. There’s a friend of mine you been treatin’ like garbage. Sweet girl with no one looking out for her, deserves a hell of a lot better than the two self-obsessed bastards she’s shacked up with. Still, she’s a tender hearted little thing, and probably she’d be upset if I left you out here to die. Personally I don’t think it’d be much more’n you’d deserve.”

And Scout had thought Pyro had been mean.

But this was Miss Pauling’s truck, and in the end Miss Pauling’s truck always went back to Miss Pauling. And he really, really needed Miss Pauling.

So Scout clenched his teeth, dropped his shoulders, and climbed into the cab. He locked the door as he closed it. Just as a reminder, a sort of last ward against the kind of impulse he got in cars. Not that it would stop him, if things got really bad. He wasn't sure if anything would, anymore.

 


	63. damage

Scout’s wrist just plain hurt, now. It was still a better pain than the broken arm, but the cloth on his palm was almost completely red. Hiding it from the damn vet was easy enough, but he was going to have to change the bandages again. Figure out something less obvious.

The damn vet. He hadn’t said a word to Scout since he’d pulled him into the car, and ten minutes later he pulled into the driveway of the farmhouse. “G’wan, then,” Gil said, looking expectantly at Scout.

Scout had other ideas. “Where’s Miss Pauling?”

“I don’t rightly know if that’s information you’ve got a damn claim to.”

A sharp, angry something jolted through him. The old bastard could rip on him all he wanted, God knew he deserved it, but Miss Pauling was another matter. “You’ve got her goddamn truck an’ she ain’t in it, where is she? You fuckin’ kill her or what?”

The vet squinted at him, then, long and hard. “Boy,” he started, and Scout dug his fingers into his palm again, held fast to the pain that shot through his arm just for something to focus on, “look here. I don’t know what your damage is, but whatever it is it ain’t bad enough to be actin’ the way you are. Same with that ghost you’re keepin’ in there, the two of you are a damn disgrace. I cannot _imagine_ what that girl sees in either of you except a pretty face, and that only goes for the other one, but you should count your lucky stars that she does. Pauling is fine. Now get the hell out. And make damn sure those hens of hers are taken care of.”

Scout got the hell out, slamming the truck door so loudly that the birds fell silent.

 

* * *

 

This time, he made no attempt to disguise that he was back in the house. His uneven footsteps rattled the paintings on the walls as he stalked to the bathroom, daring Pyro to come and find him. The ghost did not appear as Scout redressed his hand, more meticulously this time. Scout did not find him until he made his way upstairs to their bedroom, and he had hoped he wouldn’t. The walk had drained him, and he was hungry enough that his hands were shaking. All he wanted to do was sleep.

He didn’t want to open the bedroom door to find Pyro stuffing clothes into a suitcase.

Today was just getting better and better.

Scout felt numb and slow and stupid as he took the scene in, frozen in the doorway. Pyro looked up at him, and then back down to his work. “…What are you doing?”

“Packing.”

“What’re … why are you …”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you before,” Pyro said evenly, folding another pair of pants and dropping it into the luggage. “That got really out of hand and I shouldn’t have. Umm.” At last he hesitated, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “I called my sister after you left. I was thinking it might be better for both you and me if we gave each other some space.”

And there it was.

There was a dim ringing sound in the air, distant, in the way that made Scout think it probably wasn’t real. Just in his head. Medic had given him tinnitus more than once. This was worse. “You’re leaving.”

“Just for a little while.”

“Fucking took you long enough.”

Pyro stopped short, looking at him with a furrowed brow–a bewildered expression. Scout slumped against the doorframe, staring him in the eye. “You don’t have to pretend you’ll come back.”

“…What the hell are you talking about?”

“Jesus Christ, Pyro, I’m not a _fucking_ idiot, I’m not _stupid,_ the only reason you ever stuck around was because you felt like you owed me something anyway.” The words boiled up, gushing out between his teeth, sharp-edged and barbed and making his gums bleed. “Because I let Medic ruin my life so he wouldn’t go after you, fine, great, whatever, but Medic’s fucking goddamn gone now so you can stop pretending you aren’t sick of me and my shit and ditch me already! Go fucking find someone who isn’t, what was it you said, man, isn’t a _fragile, weak, pathetic piece of shit!_ ”

Pyro stared at him. Scout could feel himself crumbling, shaking harder than before. He waited for Pyro to answer, to shout back in kind, but the seconds crawled by and that did not happen. Instead Pyro swallowed, hard, and dropped his gaze. The blood was coming to his face. It took Scout until Pyro opened his mouth to speak and instead covered it again and took a great, hiccuping gasp of a breath to realize he was holding back tears. Pyro turned away, and his voice wavered when he spoke. “… I’m going to stay with Eleanor,” he repeated. “I’ll be back in a month. We can’t keep living like this, Scout.”

“We can’t—”

“Stop it,” Pyro snapped. “Just stop it, Scout, I can’t believe—” He broke off, ran a hand through his hair. “… My ride’ll be here in an hour. Eleanor’s number is on the fridge.” Pause. “I’m going to come back.”

Scout had already started walking away before he finished speaking, digging his nails into his palm again.


	64. shorthand

Miss Pauling had a good long nap. Miss Pauling had a cup of tea. Miss Pauling had a sympathetic ear.

And Miss Pauling was making a list. Because Miss Pauling was quietly, secretly  _mad_. Mostly at herself.

Gil had taken her truck into town, to get the oil changed. That had been on Miss Pauling’s to-do list for ages. Gil was a sweetheart. A little overbearing, now that he’d seen just what exactly she lived with. But she’d been passively whining about the boys for as long as she’d known him, probably it was only reasonable that he’d feel an obligation.

“You deserve t’be treated a hell of a lot better’n those two’re treating you,” Gil said finally. He’d barely spoken since they’d arrived at his house, and when she'd woken up from her nap and come downstairs, he'd returned from changing her oil. They sat in his bright, cheerily clean kitchen, like they had in the past, after Pauling had finished with her invented questions about her chickens. Pauling was watching wisps of steam rising off her cup of tea.

“I know exactly what I’ve gotten myself into, Gil. Don’t parent me.”

Gil chuckled, took a swig of his coffee. “Girl, you are badly in need of parenting, if you think you’ve got a handle on the pair of them.”

The notepad in front of her was covered in her own blend of custom shorthand. Complex, practically indecipherable, three or four different systems all knotted together, and then shifted one letter of the alphabet over, just to be sure. It was a list of everything she knew about the pair of them, Scout and Noah both. She wasn’t a doctor. She didn’t particularly have a job title anymore, but she had a pair of mercenaries, and on her watch, something had gone terribly, terribly wrong for them. That was her fault. And Miss Pauling didn’t put up with being shut out of things. Miss Pauling wormed her way in.

She’d made the list once before, in her neat, swooping handwriting. She’d made it just for Scout, before she’d known just how bad things were with Noah, too. She’d made it to show to Noah, back when Noah was still going by Pyro. She’d tried to show it to him, to get his input. He had looked it over, agreed with most of it, then taken it away and burned it. Told her never to tell Scout she’d done anything like that, that he wouldn’t be able to handle the notion he was being observed, studied. Not a week later, Noah had exploded at her in the barn. Noah got a list of his own.

The only difference between a list Miss Pauling made on paper and a list Miss Pauling made in her head was that the former could be destroyed. The former  just helped her think. The latter would always exist. If she could think in a kitchen that was bright and tidy and she had a cup of tea and good, patient company, so much the better. Miss Pauling had a lot of thinking to do.

“Tell me what’s wrong with his leg.”

Gil looked up, shrugged. “Hard to say, given as I ain’t actually a doctor and also how I couldn’t walk him around to see how he limps on it. And also how he ain’t a horse. If he’d been a horse, probably I’d have shot him by now, sometimes that’s kinder when their legs go bad.”

“ _Gil_.”

“What? His asshole boyfriend said it, and I know you heard him.” He slurped his coffee. “So he limps. Numbness, pain, spasms, tingling? What?  It gives out on him sometimes? In cold, or heat or after he pushes himself too hard? Does he run on it? Can I ask _him_ any of this?”

Pauling couldn’t answer. Her shoulders slumped, she sighed. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t have let you look at it if he’d been conscious.”

“Could be a hell of a lot of things. My first guess is just nerve damage, the muscles didn’t feel bad. If it’s just pain and inflammation, I would start him on steroid shots, every few months, though that ain’t the sort of thing you want to keep on with for too long. But I ain’t gonna do it to someone who ain’t able to consent to it. The arm was one thing, girl. We see eye to eye ‘bout that. Nothin’ further, though. More’n the bastard deserves, anyway.”

Pauling sighed, sipped her tea. “Probably he’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known, once you can get close to him. He’s not a bastard. Neither of them are. They’re just...they’ve been through a lot. A hell of a lot, more than I know, and what I do know I can’t explain. War. Just a lot of war and hurt and trauma. And I just want to help. That was always my job, to do what was needed. And they need help.”

“Back on the farm…” Gil began, then hesitated, drained his coffee cup. Fell silent. Gil had only told her a couple of stories from his time living in a communal farm, somewhere up in Vermont. It still existed, as far as he knew. He hadn’t ever been back. They were always stories that were worth hearing, though.

“I don’t really want to hear about the six people, the tree and the goat.”

“It was nine people, and it wasn’t all sunshine and orgies, girl. We had a lot of people come back from wars. Vietnam. Real damaged. _Real_ damaged, the way that doesn’t get fixed. And they did themselves so much harm trying to fix it. And I let ‘em. I doled out weed and heroin and coke and morphine and pain killers in the name of helping these poor souls, and I helped kill a lot of ‘em. Times it seemed like a kindness. Times I wonder if I did it for my own sake, because I couldn’t bear to be around the suffering. I loved broken people, and I tried to be what they needed. You use a lot of yourself up, bein’ all things to all people, and there’s a limit to _you_ , girl. It’s all I’m trying to tell you.”

“They needed someone.”

“We all need someone. You’ve got a pair of boys full of hate and hurt and darkness and if there’s a red line of love snarled up in it, you’d be lucky to catch a hold of it. I’m telling you there’s a reason I live all by my lonesome out on a farm in the middle of nowhere, with chickens and horses and not much of anybody else. Don’t let this happen to you, girl. It’s lonely.”

Pauling didn’t know what to say to that. She’d made her choice, she realized, before she’d known what the choice really was. “I was going to be alone anyway. I would’ve been alone without them.”

“Bein’ lonely with people is worse than bein’ lonely on your own. And I see it in the heart of you, girl, you ain’t gettin’ anything like love from either of them. If fucking was all you wanted, you could get it better and cheaper and _kinder_ than what those boys’ll give you. Mark my words. I’ve seen it too many times. It’s why I’m trying to tell you. They don’t even know they’re doing it, and neither do you.I got the chance, and I gave that skinny bastard a piece of my mind. ‘Bout time someone did.”

Pauling froze, her pen halfway through the word _damage_. “What? You talked to Noah. Noah’s not skinny. Scout was...you didn’t talk to Scout. Scout _is_ skinny, but he’s put on weight and he’s getting better. In spite of everything, in spite of Noah’s damn bad attitude, in spite of how he slides back sometimes, he _is_ getting better and I won’t hear any different.”

“Well, that ain’t what I told him when I dropped him back home. At _your home_. His stupid ass had gone five or six miles down the highway, in the wrong direction, looking for _you_ , dehydrated and exhausted and with a gimpy leg and a busted arm. Hand bloodied all to hell, too, though he tried to hide it. Man who makes choices like that is a man who wants to die. The man who _lets him go_ in that condition is a man who’s been through too much to love anybody the way they oughta be loved. Don’t you love a pair of men like that, sweet girl, you are gonna hurt so bad at the end of it.” He stared at her sadly. “And there _will_ be an end to it.”

Miss Pauling had stopped listening after Gil had said “looking for you”. She abandoned her tea, stood up. She heard what he said, understood it, but she wouldn’t listen. Her boys. Oh, god, her poor boys. She’d let herself be bullied out of her house, had done _exactly_ what Pyro had done in the barn, and she was supposed to know better than that. Scout couldn’t be trusted to know what was best for him anymore.

“Gil. Give me my keys. Thank you for everything. Give me my keys, I have to go.”

He looked at her a long time, but sighed. Nodded. Handed her keys over, and let her go.


	65. ain't nobody here

Scout didn’t know how to take care of chickens. He’d grown up in Boston, there weren’t any chickens for miles, unless they were dead, plucked, beheaded, and from the butcher on the corner, and your ma was trying to make just one of them feed eight scrawny boys. It had been a long, long time before Scout had learned to like eating chicken again.

Scout also just hated birds, for obvious reasons. The barn had been full of mourning doves when they’d arrived. Scout had had a vicious, motherfucker of a panic attack, that first morning. While Pauling and Pyro were curled up in the cab of the truck, snoring, he’d been clutching at his heart and trying to breathe and wishing he could believe he wasn’t dying on the dirt floor of a ramshackle barn in The Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Oregon. While doves cooed and fluttered above him, the same way they always had so many of the times he’d died before.

He’d found rat poison and he’d found birdseed and he had mixed the two together and flung it on the floor, and he hadn’t been able to watch as the lot of them had fluttered down from the rafters, gorged themselves. They were all dead when he came back an hour later, and he’d thrown them in the pond at the bottom of the hill and never told anyone.

There had used to be fish in the pond. There weren’t any fish in the pond anymore. No rats in the barn, either. There’d been some collateral damage.

The chickens lived in a cage. He’d gotten kind of used to the chickens, though he still didn’t like to go near them. But Pyro was gone and Pauling was gone and he was supposed to take care of the stupid fucking chickens.

Scout didn’t know how to take care of chickens. And also he’d been sitting on an overturned crate in their stupid cage for half an hour with a half empty bottle of the stupid, _vile_ Blue Label Johnnie Walker that Pyro drank and was a snob about. He had a pistol in his lap and he’d always been terrible at shooting himself. And it took him a long time to get drunk with something as disgusting as Scotch, and they hadn’t had any cola or even root beer in the house. So this was taking a while.

The chickens didn’t like _him_ , either, they were all huddled in their little chicken house, which suited Scout just fine. They were clucking at each other, incessantly, nervous. It was driving him a little crazy, but he didn’t want to go near them to make them stop. Chickens were _loud_.

They were loud enough that he hadn’t heard the telltale rattle of the loose exhaust pipe, the slam of the door of the truck. He managed maybe another half a pull of stupid fucking awful fucking Pyro’s stupid Scotch tasted like the worst kind of fire and _burned_ going down and made him hurt so bad he could’ve screamed when he drank it. Didn’t. No point scaring the chickens any further.

He didn’t hear Miss Pauling calling for him, for Pyro. Noah. Scout almost never called Pyro Noah. He didn’t hear her coming down the path from the house. He’d been thumbing the safety on and off. It was the sort of calming, repetitive motion that he’d been doing for years, despite the fact that it wasn’t actually calming, just repetitive. Had he always been this compulsive? With his cut up hands and his loathing of birds and his million and one nervous tics. He hated himself this way, why would anyone else in the world ever feel any different.

Enough was enough. He was a goddamn coward. He would have been able to lift a trembling hand with a pistol in it to the underside of his jaw a lot sooner than this, years sooner, if he hadn’t always been such a fucking coward. He’d always needed Pyro for this part. There’d been a time, long, long ago, when Pyro had loved him enough to do this when Scout needed it done.

“...don’t. Please don’t, you’ll kill my chickens.” Pauling’s voice was tiny, pleading. He hadn’t heard her arrive, she wasn’t supposed to be here. Maybe he was imagining her. Maybe this stupid fucking blue label bullshit packed more of a wallop than he thought.

Scout laughed, anyway, a little hysterical and drunker than he realized. Fucking chickens. “Ain’t nobody's here but us chickens.”

“I _mean_ it Scout, please. Please, please, they’ll die and then I’ll be all alone. W-where’d Noah go?”

“I ain’t gonna kill your stupid fuckin' _chickens. Fuckin'_  . Fucking chick'ns.” He laughed again, dark, more than a little angry. “I’m a terrible fuckin' shot, but I ain’t...ain't fuckin'  _that_ bad. _Noah_ left, or I woulda got _him_ t'do it, an’ I’d be fuckin’ dead already.”

Miss Pauling wasn’t listening. She’d pulled the cage door open, knelt in the bedding. Held out her hands, not towards him, but towards the group of hens clustered on the other side of the cage, huddled below their hutch. “Girls. Oh girls, come here. Tiffy, Tiffy! Emma-belle! Chick chick chick chick chick!” Her voice was light and gentle, cheery, but she was crying openly. Especially as the tiny flock of them came gamboling over excitedly, clustering around her outstretched hands now. She was stroking them, herding them gently towards the door. Scout had always avoided being around Miss Pauling and her chickens. He hadn’t ever seen the way they adored her. “Babies, babies! No food right now lovelies, later, though! Effie darling, Effie! Come here my girls! Cindy-hen, Cindy-rella! Good girls, out in the yard! Madgey, Madge! Oh, honeys, I’m okay, it’s all right. Chick chick chicks! Chickies! Watch out for the damned barn cat, babies, stick together. Mabel, you take care of them all. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

She shut the door behind them. Newly freed, they...clustered around the cage door, clucking at her. Pauling sighed and groaned and buried her face in her hands. “I’m begging you, Scout, they’ll die. They’ll get scared to death, chickens die from loud noises. I killed one of my Nan’s chickens when I was little, I set off a firecracker behind the coop and one of them just froze up and died. I just thought it would be funny, they always used to run when I chased them, I thought it would be just like that. Oh god, I never told anyone. My Nan thought it was a thunderstorm that did it.” She was crying, but she didn’t lose the thread of her voice when she cried. She stayed composed, calm. Her eyes were just glossy with tears. “Please, not here.”

Scout got up, a little unsteadily. Okay. Probably he hadn’t calculated just how hard scotch hit him when he hadn’t eaten anything in over a day. Shoved the door of the cage open with a bang that scattered the stupid chickens. Still starving, still holding the pistol in a trembling hand. Undeterred, even Miss Pauling cared more about the chickens than she did about him. Fine. Fucking fine, if Noah came back (and he _wasn’t_ coming back) they could have each other, the both of them. Fine.

Fine.

He stumbled down the hill towards the barn.

 


	66. morphine

**RED BASE - 197X**

* * *

 

Today Scout had come out of the operating room vomiting blood. He didn’t know what had happened to him this time. Medic had muttered something in German when Pyro tried to at least get a diagnosis, and told him _not_ to let Scout respawn or _else_ , and stormed off. Fucker. So he was left with miserable, whimpering Scout, spitting up blood every ten minutes and saying his chest hurt, it _hurt_ , and begging for the bullet, and Pyro couldn’t leave or go anywhere or do anything else but sit with him.

And it wasn’t that he didn’t love Scout, it wasn’t that he wasn’t willing to do this for him, but it was getting to be too much. This had been happening for a year and a half. Medic kept saying he needed to conduct more trials, and laughed when Pyro had asked what they were, saying he would never understand. Bastard. Fucking bastard monster. Pyro had never been angrier in his life, and he wished he could say all of it was directed at Medic.

But all Medic had said was not to kill Scout.

Scout made a sort of keen when Pyro got up, but said nothing else as he knelt to dig through the filing cabinet he’d been using as a dresser. There, at the bottom.

When he sat back down next to Scout he had a syringe in his hand, and he felt Scout pull away at the sight of it. “Give me your arm,” Pyro said, reaching for it. “It’s the morphine, Scout, it’ll help.”

The morphine. Pyro had been at his wit’s end when he’d asked the drug store clerk if they had anything stronger for pain, a month ago. He hadn’t really expected anything. He certainly hadn’t expected a lead that would net him _gallons_ of the stuff.

And it wasn’t like he couldn’t pay.

The look of relief on Scout’s face was palpable, though his hand still shook when he let Pyro take it. As well it fucking should have. Pyro had never been near a syringe in his life before RED, but Scout was always too grateful for the gift to ask why Pyro knew how to bring out a vein, how to inject the drug properly.

It was fine, Pyro told himself as he depressed the plunger, his teeth gnawing his lip. He could help Scout better, now. He even knew the right dose.

And five minutes later Scout was out, like a light, slumped heavy against him. Pyro exhaled, laid him down, and put the syringe away. Maybe he would feel better when he woke up.

 

* * *

 

Only, Scout didn’t wake up when he was supposed to, about four hours later. And only, after an hour of Pyro panicking and trying to figure out what had gone wrong, Scout stopped breathing entirely.

When Pyro checked his pulse and found it gone, for a few seconds he just stared down at the corpse. Medic was going to kill him, was his first thought.

His second thought was how _easy_ a death it had been for Scout. No worrying about the gunshot. No holding Scout down and suffocating him, no gushing blood.

No lingering, agonized, short-term hate for Scout and what Pyro had to do for him. Just relief.

Pyro stared at the body, numb and mute, until respawn stole it away.


	67. dependence

**RED BASE - 197X**

* * *

 

 

When Scout had limped in at 5AM sharp and sat himself down on the operating table, tired and frazzled and wishing Pyro was there, Medic did not immediately drop into his routine of needles and pills and incisions. Instead he stopped directly in front of Scout: drawn up to his full height, peering over his pince-nez at him. “Scout,” he said, and his voice was like cold water thrown in Scout’s face.

“I, I uh, yeah, what?”

“You have been respawning yourself without permission.”

Scout cringed. (Scout didn’t fucking cringe, he wasn’t a person who cringed or flinched or _limped_ or did any of the things he caught himself doing all the time now.) “I … it was just the couple’a times. It was an accident.”

Medic’s stony gaze did not change. “Oh. You killed yourself by _accident._ ”

“It, I, it was a, an overdose. Accident. P—painkiller, s’all, I didn’t mean it to happen. Honest—”

“Painkiller?” Medic said sharply, leaning into his face. “What painkiller?”

“It … just, just morphine.”

The look of disgust that consumed Medic’s expression seemed to sour all the air in the room. “Wonderful,” he deadpanned. “Wonderful. You will cease using it at once.”

He swept away without another word as Scout’s exhausted mind tried to catch up. No—no morphine. No more morphine. Oh, God, no, no no no, he couldn’t do it, “No,” he mumbled, “I, I-I-I, it’s—it’s the only thing that helps—”

“I’m sure. And then you develop a dependence on it, and then you lose your pain tolerance, yes? What good are you to RED if you begin to be unable to suffer at all, when you are shot at every day?”

Scout couldn’t find any words, just stark horror. “P—that ain’t gonna happen, shit. _Shit_ , Medic, y—you leave me fucked up all the time, I can’t hardly breathe for it sometimes what the fuck do you want me to do?! You keep doing this to me, Pyro keeps havin’ to fuckin’ drown me when you do let me respawn an’ the morphine it’s, it don’t hurt nothin‘, I ain’t gonna get hooked respawn fixes it I ain’t hooked an’ _you make me need it_ , it ain’t, ain’t goddamn _fair_!”

The whole time, Medic had been dispassionately arranging his instruments, hauling them over to the operating table. He was silent through Scout’s entire rant. Now he spoke, in Scout’s face once again. “You will develop a psychological dependence,” he said flatly. “Respawn will not fix that. The team _will_ notice. You are a soldier, you are not allowed the comforts of civilians,” and as he said it he seized Scout’s arm and jammed an IV into the crook of his elbow. Scout yelped. “And our sessions will become that much more uncomfortable for you. So: you will stop.”

“Medic _please_ —”

“You will stop or I will be forced to take measures to control you,” Medic said, pushing him down against the table. “Ones I do not believe you will find as easy to endure. How is Pyro, by the way?”

Scout stopped struggling. “H-he’s … he’s great.”

 

* * *

 

So of course this time Medic left him unable to fucking speak. He’d done something to his throat and it was hard to breathe, it was hard to even fucking _move_ everything hurt so bad. Medic had done something with electricity and numbing agents and by the end of it he had to call Pyro to get Scout out of room. “Do not leave him to his own devices,” Medic told him severely, with a pointed look at Scout. “Bring him back in three hours. I will fix him then.”

Scout shook the all the way back to his bed, listening to Pyro curse softly under his breath. He kept his teeth clamped down on his lip the whole time. He couldn’t tell Pyro not to use the morphine. He couldn’t let Pyro know that it hurt.

Twenty minutes later the last of the anesthetic wore off and he had blood streaming down his chin from where he’d bitten his lip open, and he didn’t even notice the pain when Pyro slid the needle into his skin.

 

* * *

 

Later Scout would have no memory of Pyro bringing him back to Medic. He would not recall the cold anger sliding onto Medic’s face as he examined Scout’s arms, pulled his eyelids open, hissed under his breath. He was too stupefied, even, to notice when Medic called Pyro back into the room and snarled at him in low tones, or when Pyro barked back—struck out in anger.

It was, of course, the only excuse Medic needed.

Scout didn’t notice when Medic pinned a cursing, struggling Pyro to the wall and shot him full of sedatives, either.

 

* * *

 

When Pyro came to, it almost would have been funny, how the tables were turned. Scout, whole and well, was shaking his shoulder. “Pyro. Pyro!”

Pyro’s head hurt. It felt like he was dying, one of the slow, agonizing deaths you got from bleeding out. His breathing hitched in pain when Scout touched him, fuck, he was on fire. “Stop,” he hissed, “stop, don’t touch me, _stop_.”

Scout stopped, and for a few seconds Pyro lay where he was, staring mutely at the celing until the pain began, slowly, to fade. “ _Fuck._ ”

“Fuckin’ hell Pyro I—fuck. Did he do somethin’ to you? I woke up over in respawn an’ you was here, an’ you wouldn’t wake up for like, for like two hours—”

“Would you stop fucking _yammering._ ”

Pyro’s head hurt. He’d only meant to ask Scout to quiet down. He hadn’t meant to snap, or to speak to him in the sneering tone that he had. But Scout broke off instantly as Pyro pushed himself upright, blinking down at him. “S, sorry. I just, fuckin’, I was worried—”

“That’s fucking great, good for you, maybe you should’ve thought of that before you fucking dragged me into this shithole with you.”

“…What?”

What indeed. Pyro had fixed his eyes at the foot of the bed he’d woken up on, trying to figure out why he was so— _angry,_ God, angry like he’d never been in his life, he wasn’t even sure if he felt like he was burning from pain or from the horrible, frothing _rage_ that had begun coursing through him. He bit his tongue, hard, tried to wait until he felt like he could speak properly again. “I … Scout, you should go.”

“But—”

“ _Scout_ —” No, no no no, fuck, Pyro shut his eyes and covered his mouth. He bit his hand until the fury went from a boil to a simmer. “I d, I don’t think I’m myself. Don’t listen to me, fucking—fucking _stupid_ faggot bastard that I am—Goddammit Scout _leave_ –”

“I’m not gonna just—”

“ _GET THE FUCK OUT!_ ”

Pyro swung at him, missed, clumsy and weak. But it made Scout jerk backwards, staring at Pyro’s bared teeth and hateful glare. “…Okay,” he said at last, faintly, appeasing. “Okay. I’m—I’m leavin’. Christ.”

So he left. And good thing, too, because as soon as the door was shut Pyro grabbed the nearest thing, a lamp, and flung it on the ground with a vicious howl.

By the time he could see straight again he was bleeding from the knuckles and fingernails and had a gash in his cheek he couldn’t remember getting. Scout had come back, stared at the mess, asked him what happened, why it had happened.

And the worst of it was that Pyro, exhausted and tearful and only wanting Scout to stop looking at him like he might swing at him again, didn’t know.


	68. kindly

She hadn’t run after him. Pauling had followed carefully, cautiously. She didn’t want to spook him, because even if he hadn’t been drunk, she was really afraid he was serious. This wasn’t what Noah had warned her about. This was nothing like what Noah had warned her about. No sideways talk about “leaving” no cuteness, no coyness. No codewords. He had a gun and a bottle of scotch and he hated scotch, especially the blue label. Like three hundred dollars worth of scotch. Special occasions only. Noah had been loudly appalled when he’d poured the three of them a round, and Scout had grimaced and dumped half a can of coke into it.

And he was angry. Noah got angry. Scout really didn’t. Scout was sweet and patient and gentle and incredibly, dearly kind. She’d been amazed by how wrong she’d always been about him.

She crossed the threshold, into the barn. Pauling hated the fucking barn. And she hated the sight of Scout, stood in the middle of it with his back to her. His head bowed, shoulders shaking. He had the bottle clutched clumsily in the fingers of his left hand, his broken arm. Gil had given him a sling for it. This was gone. In his right hand--Gil had said this was bleeding? She couldn’t see, it was clenched too tightly around the grip of the pistol in his hand.

“...go.” Pauling barely heard him, but she froze in her tracks at the sound of his voice. “I’m...mm. I mean it. Miss Pauling. Y’gotta leave. Pyro left. F-finally left, s’been a long time comin’. S’been too much. For him...for me, too. W-we been at it too long. Too fuckin’ long, an’ I can’t do it anymore, an’ sure as hell I can’t do it without him. I was never tryin’ to...I never wanted him to be stuck with me. I’m glad he wasn’t, in the end. I’m so glad he’s gone. I need to...Miss Pauling. J-just. I need to.”

Pauling couldn’t help it, her mind had snagged on something Gil had said. Gil had seen this coming, Gil had spent all of ten minutes with Scout, and he’d come away from it knowing that Scout wanted to die. She’d had a year and a half, and she had been closer to him than anyone but Noah, and she still didn’t believe it. But maybe that was her own fault. Maybe she’d never given him enough credit. She took an involuntary step forward, reaching out.

He glanced over his shoulder, immediately jerked the gun up. “D-don’t. Don’t, you can’t stop me. You...Miss Pauling, _stop_ . Get out. Get the fuck out, go away. Y’can’t...fuckin’...can’t fuckin’ drug me this time, you _can’t_. I want this. I need to, I want this.”

She stopped. She’d stopped crying, she was pale and trembling, but calm. In spite of it all, an icy, familiar calm had settled over her. She had hoped never to feel this way again.  “...Scout. If...okay. It’s okay. Just...please, there’s something I have to tell you.”

His eyes hardened. “I don’t _care_ if you’re gonna try’n say you love me. Pyro was supposed to...he was fuckin’ s’posed t’love me. It don’t help, _never_ helped. Never did any fuckin’ good.”

Pauling took a deep breath. “That isn’t it. I do love you. I do. I love you because you need me. I love Noah because he _doesn’t_ , but he wants me anyway. And I’m not sure I’ve ever loved _anyone_ as much as I love you. I wish it could have helped, but that’s selfish of me, and it doesn’t matter. It’s all right that it doesn’t. But that’s not it. I...I mean, it’s part of it. But it’s not what I wanted to...Scout. Please, there’s so much I wish you knew about me. I never got to tell anyone, but I _wanted_ to tell you. I-I think it might help, if you knew. Please. Please, just trust me? I know you still don’t. That’s okay. But, just try? Just for a little while. One last thing, for me, Scout. Please. If _you_ ever loved me, even a little.”

The pistol in his hand wavered, dropped away from his jaw, just a fraction. He was visibly unsteady on his feet, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he had missed his shot. He had always had a curious streak, though. And even at the outset, when she’d realized just how fractured, how shattered he’d been by whatever had happened in the Badlands, it had stirred something inside her to see him hopeful, given a chance at a fresh start. There was still hope in there somewhere, because Scout narrowed his eyes at her, gestured with the bottle he still held. A little bit of liquor sloshed up and over the lip of it. “...f-fuckin’...I don’t...shit. What?” And then, belligerently, “nothin’s _ever_ helped.”

“I know. I'm so sorry. Can we sit down?" Pauling bit her lip. "And can I have a drink?"

He laughed, ugly. Threw the bottle at her feet, amber splashing onto the dirt floor. Straightened, instead of sitting down. “Pour one out for me, Miss Pauling.”

She picked the bottle up, sat down in the dirt. Most of it had splashed out. Took a tiny sip and grimaced. “God, that really is awful. We had that bottle of...um. The spiced rum. You should’ve grabbed that.”

“Right. Fuck. Shit, yeah, I’ll remember that f’next time.” Laughing again, with that raw, hysterical edge. She’d always used to love his laugh. Not this one. “Get to the point, Miss Pauling.”

“Do you know what my job was? In the Badlands?”

Scout blinked at her. “Secretary.”

“Not quite. Just...whatever was needed. I did what was needed. I don’t know if it was written down anywhere, but whatever was asked of me, that was my job.”

Pauling had done it in the barn, with Noah. She’d played the hand open, shown all her cards, she’d been honest. She hated to be honest, it went against her nature. And the first thing she’d done, when they’d gotten a free minute, after Noah had brought Scout inside--she’d retrieved a syringe full of a particular blend of benzodiazepines. Just to have on hand. Just in case, because you never knew, did you? She retrieved it from the pocket where she kept her syringes, unsheathed the needle, held it up, her hand trembling.

“...d-don’t. Don’t you fucking dare, Miss Pauling. Don’t you even try.”

She shook her head. “N-no. I won’t. But if _you_ want to. If...if you need to, Scout. The first man I killed, I killed him because he asked me to. I was only fifteen and he was my Papa, and he made me promise I wouldn’t let him suffer, at the end. He was on his deathbed and he didn’t even recognize me, he didn’t know who I was. But he was hurting, so bad, he _needed_ me to. If he can see me now, I hope he doesn’t know the price I paid for doing it. It would have broken his heart.”

Scout was staring at her, now, blankly. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gun in his hand, but it had dropped a little further, away from his face. She took a deep breath, continued, “I trust you. If you say this is what you want, what you need. I never understood how bad it could be, whatever happened to you and Noah. Worse than I can imagine, because I believed you were getting better. Maybe it just looked like it from the outside.” She’d started crying now, because she couldn’t help it.

“But I believe you, Scout. I-if you’d let me. If you'd _ask me._ I'll do it. I want to help. It’s all I ever wanted. Please, it’s just a sedative. But you’re drunk off your ass, it’ll kill you if I let you have it. But _kindly_. Like they do with morphine, when someone’s already dying. Just slow and gentle and I’ll stay with you, if you want. Or I’ll go. If you need to, Scout. Just not with the gun. Please, not with the gun. S-so I don’t have to look at that when I bury you. Or so Noah doesn’t. Or your mom. What do you want, Scout, when it’s over? Do you want us to bring you home?”

And he looked at her, kneeling, supplicant, with her last, desperate offering held out. Tears in her eyes, and in love. In love like he realized he hadn’t been, not with her. He hadn’t even noticed how much she loved him.

God, what had he ever done to deserve this?

Scout dropped the gun--more than dropped it, threw it across the barn. Crossed to her, took the needle from her hands and shattered it beneath his heel. Dropped to his knees and gathered her up as she broke down sobbing. And then the pair of them, blending together.

_“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I love you. I love you. Thank you. I’m sorry.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _end of arc_


	69. torture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not safe for work!

Noah was a fucking voyeur, so he wasn’t fun to tease. Scout got insecure if he felt left out, sometimes dangerously so. Miss Pauling, though, had the right mix of everything to be driven mad when the boys got busy without her. That was the idea, after all.

There was dominance and there was dominance. It had been a year, and Noah’s need to control physically had had its edge taken off. It was still there, of course, but now he wanted to play with it, find its limits. More importantly, find ways to satisfy it when Scout was in the room, without putting him off.

So tonight Noah had hauled both of them onto the bed and he’d kissed Pauling until she was flustered and pink and had lost her shirt somewhere. Then he’d sat her down firmly and told her, with lidded eyes and a coy grin, that she was to _watch_. “And keep your hands on your knees,” he added, dragging his fingernails lightly down her back and making her shiver. “Nowhere else, pretty thing, understand?”

She made a horrible face. “Oh, I see. This is _torture,_ Noah.”

He grinned and kissed her again, and then Scout was there on his shoulder, sliding his hands up Noah’s shirt. “Yo, we waitin’ for somethin’?”

“Just you,” he returned, twisting to pull Scout against him, dropping down onto the bed. Six inches from her. Scout grinned, wildly, but before he abandoned himself to the debauchery he leaned over to Pauling and kissed her, slow and deep.

“Hang in there,” he told her, before pouncing on Noah.

 

* * *

 

Two men. Two extremely attractive men, one so idealized as to be fiction, the other beautifully, brokenly human, two men she loved. Kissing. More than kissing. A lot more. Ohhh.

It wasn’t that this was the first threesome, by any means. But usually she was … preoccupied, one way or another. She hadn’t realized Noah would make that sound if you bit his ear, or that Scout liked fingers in his mouth. Oh, gosh, everything they did seemed like it was in sync. She’d seen this plenty elsewhere, they simply always seemed to be able to predict the other if they were interacting at all. Here, though. This wasn’t pornography, it was performance art.

… except, no, it was absolutely pornography, and Pauling was digging red lines into her knees with her nails over it. She _ached_. And Noah _knew_ she wouldn’t do anything about it, either, less out of obedience to him and more because doing otherwise would be a blemish on her own abilities of self-control.

By the time one of them finally finished (Noah, with an arched back and a breathless heave of his chest), it had been nearly half an hour. They spent _so long_ on the goddamn foreplay, it was unbelievable. Pauling was red in the face and starting to hate them.

Scout was watching her, one hand still on Noah. Now he pushed himself up to his hands and knees, crossed over to her. Grinned. “Doin’ okay?”

“Scout, I know fifty-seven different ways to torture someone and I am going to use all of them on your boyfriend when we’re done here.”

His grin broadened. “ _Our_ boyfriend,” he corrected. “Hey, Pyro.”

“Nnn?”

“I’m callin’ off your weird control fetish thing here, I think Miss Pauling’s about to start cryin’.” As he said it he pulled Pauling’s hands off her knees, frowned at the red indentations in her skin. He didn’t get long; Pauling yanked him down on top of her, shoving his hands up under her bra.


	70. lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> follows Albertson's

“Hey. Um. Miss Pauling. Can I...uh. Y’know, um. Never mind, actually. Yeah, no, you’re busy, never mind...well. Whatcha doin’? Can I help?”

He’d been avoiding her, since they’d gotten back from the store. Noah was sleeping, snoring contentedly in their bedroom. Scout had helped her unload the truck in silence, had peeked in on Noah, then ducked back out. Pauling had put everything away, and she hadn’t seen him since.

Well, here he was now, though. And now the April sunlight was fading, and she had covered the dining room table in files and folders and an adding machine and three different colours of pens. Tax time. She hated tax time. She hated doing Scout and Pyro’s taxes especially, but she wasn’t fucking an accountant any longer, and  _ someone  _ had to keep things legal around here. Pauling tugged her glasses off, rubbed her eyes. “I wish you could help. Noah could help. No,  _ Pyro _ could help, if I had a match I’d just take this all out back and burn it.”

“O-oh. Uh. Okay. Well, I’ll...uh.”

She looked up, past him and through the open door, and the kitchen window, at the fading spring evening. There was a pot of soup simmering gently on the stove, waiting for Noah to wake up, she’d heard Scout quietly moving about the kitchen as he made it. “Do you want to go for a walk? Just to help me clear my head? Just...taxes. I could stand to stretch my legs.”

Pauling regretted it as soon as she said it, because he just wilted. Oh god, she was so fucking stupid sometimes. “Uh. Well. No, I-I mean. I  _ would _ ...be real nice, I bet. ‘cept my leg’s still kinda--I overdid it, t’day. So, um. So. Nah.” He looked up, tried to grin. God, she felt like shooting herself in the face. “Brings me, uh. To my point, though. Um. Sorry, for today. If I scared you. I don’t remember if I said, I kinda get a little fuzzy after ‘em, sometimes. An’...and thanks.”

Well, she had caught a hold of his hand, now. Pulling herself up, hugging him. “Of course. Oh, honey. You were shaking like a leaf, of course I was  _ worried _ . I mean, I tried not to be scared. Noah warned me, I just...well. I mean, I’m glad you weren’t sick or anything. I guess you did scare me a little. I hope I did the right thing.”

“Oh, sure. Nah, you were fine. Don’t freak out with the shakin’ thing. I don’t like it--hell, nobody does, freaks Pyro all t’hell, he hates it--but it doesn’t hurt anything. My hands’ll still tremor for a while after, but it ain’t so bad as it was.” He held a hand out, and true enough, his fingers trembled uncontrollably.

She twined her fingers through his, squeezed them, held them still. “Oh, I hope it stops soon.”

“Ain’t really much of anything t’do, just gotta ride ‘em out. Nobody’s ever died from ‘em, far as I know. I sure haven’t.” His smile was a bit more genuine, this time. He had tensed a little, when her arms had first slipped around his waist, as he always did when she touched him unannounced, but he was getting better about it, had relaxed against her quickly, and he liked to be hugged. Not for too long, but they’d sort of unofficially worked out that when he squeezed her a little or kissed the top of her head, she should let him go.

“So, taxes, huh?” Scout dropped into a chair next to hers, peeked under a corner of one of the files she had laid out. “I ain’t gonna be no use at all, Miss Pauling, sorry ‘bout that. Not Pyro, either, unless you do decide t’burn it all. I think you were just messin’ with me about that, though.”

Miss Pauling groaned and sank back into her own chair. “Oh my god. Oh, don’t talk to me about taxes. Your taxes are terrible. Bidwell used to do mine, he told me there was an entire floor at the corporate HQ devoted to doing the team’s taxes. Auugh. Augh.”

“Are you tryin’a give me a panic attack ‘bout taxes?” She looked up sharply, but he was grinning at her. “Just a joke.”

“You are an ass.”

His teeth flashed at her now. “Yeah.”

There was one thing, though, that struck her. “Oh, maybe actually you can take a look at something, for me.” She rifled through the papers, pulled out a large, folded map, unfolding it, spreading it flat. “I got it at the library. Umm. It’s a survey map, topographical. I was trying to find our place, but....”

“There.” Scout had barely glanced at it, then pointed a finger right in the middle, next to her hand, trying to smooth out a crease. “You can see the pond, an’ the way the hill out back runs down to the woods? See the little rise in the middle, that’s where the house is. Um, ‘bout a hundred feet off, there’s where the barn’d be. Here, hey, you wanna hand me...oh, no, here’s a pen, I got it. Look.”

It was from the library, and maps were surprisingly expensive, but she was transfixed. Because he’d taken the pen, he’d started to draw. Top down, bird’s eye. It was a finely tipped pen, smooth, deep red ink. Miss Pauling had really high standards about pens. All the pens in the house were gorgeous. And then firm, dark lines, covering the wavering network of topography, printed in greenish ink.. She hadn’t been able to make the least amount of sense of it, but oh wow, there was the house. With the little extension sticking off the back, and the porch. Then the garden, tiny rows of vegetables, different symbols for each. The barn. Somehow he managed to make it apparent that the barn leaned a little. They were going to need to do something about that.

“Hah, I put a duck in the pond. Can you tell it’s a duck? S’kinda hard from the top an’ anyway there ain’t any ducks in that pond. I never knew why, s’weird. Pond oughta have ducks. Little white ducks. Ah...no, you know, I don’t really like ducks. I’m still gettin’ used to the idea of the chickens anyway...shit, I forgot your chicken cage.”

“I can tell it’s a duck.” Her little finger was still near the edge of what she now realized was the driveway. “Wow. Scout, oh wow.”

“Oh, hey here.” He lifted the pen, touched it lightly to the back of her pinky. The gentlest pressure, and then there was a tiny truck on the back of her littlest finger, and Miss Pauling had small hands. It was a really little finger. Her truck. He grinned at her, blew on it to dry the ink.

“...have you always been able to...how did you. Scout, where’d you learn this?”

He looked up, from adding tiny chickens around her chicken coop, out behind the house. Arched an eyebrow, looked just like his old self. “...Miss Pauling, whaddaya think my job was?”

She blinked at him. Blushed. Oh jeez. “Um. Running. Lots of running. Shooting people. Sometimes baseball.”

Scout laughed, really laughed. Didn’t even seem to mind being reminded that he didn’t run anymore, not even a little. Not unless he’d been scared half to death by something that he refused to specify when pressed. “Here’s a hint; clue’s in the  _ name _ .”

“ Oh, don’t be mean. I had no idea. You said Noah drew, you  _ never  _ said…”

He shrugged, embarrassed now. “Oh...no, it ain’t anything like that. Pyro’s an artist, I ain’t anything like that. Nah, it’s just copyin’. I did a couple of the house, ‘member I showed you?”

She did. She still had them, beautiful inked drawings of the kitchen, her bedroom, the living room, the porch. The kitchen, the way it hadn’t been then, but was now. The way Scout had known it was going to be, before they’d all rolled up their sleeves and gotten to work, when she was still ordering parts and lumber and paint and everything else, and she’d just glanced at it, said it was gorgeous, and assumed it was Noah’s work.

You couldn’t tell Noah things like that. Noah had an ego on him approximately the size of her truck. Her actual truck, not the tiny one etched in blood red ink on her pinky, like it was scarred there. “Why red ink, though?” she asked, idly. “It’s fine, it just looks like it’s bleeding. If it was black I would drive into that terribly scary little tattoo parlor in town and make it permanent.”

He blinked, looked at her little finger, then at the tiny layout of their home that he’d drawn on the map. “Oh. Shit. Oops. Oh, you put the wrong cap back on this one. Oh, damn. Gimme the red one, the one with the bend in the little clippy bit. Shoot.”

“...what?”

Scout winced, glanced over his shoulder, up towards the stairs, the second floor. Looking for Noah, she realized. When he looked back his face was carefully calm, composed, the way it got when he was lying. “Uh. You can’t tell. I’m...kinda colorblind. Sometimes. Not always, comes and goes. Didn’t used to be. Um. Respawn or something, I dunno. I got a book about it, when I figured it out. Sometimes it’s the red-green thing, sometimes the other one. Sometimes like old movies. Um, don’t tell Pyro, though. He’s always goin’ off about color stuff, an’ mostly I can fake it, but I’d hate him t’know. Okay? Promise.”

God. She’d had no idea. Maybe she had no idea what it looked like when Scout was lying, either. Because he grinned, looped his pinky around hers. “C’mon, Miss Pauling. It ain’t a big deal. Pinky promise?”

“...o-oh. Yeah. Of course. Pinky promise.” 

When she’d first bought it, it had been a little red truck..She wondered what colour he thought it was now.

  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dedicated with great affection and gratitude, to everyone who's made art for this ridiculous project.
> 
> Yes, Pemm, especially you. This is all Noah's fault. None of this would have happened if you hadn't made him gorgeous.


	71. rosary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly follows "lines."

Noah didn’t know they were doing this. Noah was still sleeping.

It had started with a pen, but now he had a marker. Probably it wasn’t meant to draw on people, probably she’d get a rash, but she didn’t care. In hindsight, she had a stick of black eyeliner that would have been a better choice, but the slick, slight wetness of the felt tip pen was cool, and she would have had to hunt for the eyeliner, and it was dim in the twilight of her bedroom. Outside the sun was going down.

It had started with her finger, the pinkie finger of her left hand. He’d drawn a tiny truck, her truck, in red ink like blood, and last Christmas she had almost all the way fucked him in the cab of it, in a park, but they’d been interrupted by sweeping headlights and the breathless, adrenal laughter of flight. Miss Pauling hated to leave things unfinished. She made a mental note about the next time they were in town to get groceries.

He’d put the red pen down, they were all shades of grey to him. He’d picked up the marker. He’d drawn a ring on her finger, lightly, a tiny black diamond, cartoonishly cheekily faceted. “Marry me,” he’d said, in that way he had of telling jokes that weren’t really funny, because of course she couldn’t, but she would have. She had joked right back, and it hadn’t been funny, “with a ring like that? Come on, I do your taxes. I’m going to need something much better than that.”

He had only smiled. He had only cradled her hand in his palm, resting on the top of the dining room table, drew a bracelet on her wrist. A friendship bracelet, she realized, as the knots of it were dotted onto her wrist, herringbone dotwork. She couldn’t stop him. She couldn’t move. He turned her hand gently, finished the inside of her wrist. Drew a knot to tie it off, the strings trailing down the inside of her forearm. Frayed at the ends, just a tiny bit, the way embroidery thread got.

“Don’t stop.”

Whispered, not urgent. He wasn’t stopping, anyway. One whisper thin skein of the thread had unraveled, and it had continued up her arm, became the bottom line of a two-dimensional drawing of a cube. A forest of cubes grew up around it, identical. Stacked up on top of, behind, beside each other, tessellating up the inside of her forearm. How could he be so consistent, keep the lines so perfectly straight against the curve of the living canvas of her skin. She could hardly breathe.

He pushed her sleeve up, calloused fingers. She had to swallow before she choked on her tongue, and couldn’t help the shuddering gasp that followed. The tremor that went all through her, disturbed a line, a single flaw in his impossible geometry.

He stopped immediately. “Oh, god. Heh. Sorry. I space out.”

“ _ Don’t _ .  _ Stop _ .”

She said the words separately, but she meant them together.

It was two hours later, and she still wasn’t quite naked. Her bra still covered her breasts, she was starting to feel it ache, the way it always did after a long day. Two hours ago, the best feeling in the world had been taking her bra off at the end of the day. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

He was still fully clothed. He hadn’t said a word. She loved to hear him talk, before now she had hated his silence, but this was deep and different and beautiful. There was a topographical map of the land that lay around them, copied. It began at her knee cap, that had tickled so she couldn’t help giggling, trying not to, lest she disturb another perfect line. The map covered her thigh, the bone of her right hip. She couldn’t have said where the border of it was, when he stopped and changed subjects again, lightly skipping across the ticklish arc of her belly, to her rib cage.

And then birds. Just a hundred tiny birds, all kinds, silhouetted. She counted. She couldn’t see them, so she counted the feeling of each one as the pen kissed her skin, with it’s slightly alcoholic breath. There weren’t nearly enough fumes generated by a single black marker for her to feel this lightheaded. But her head swam, just drunkenly, faintly. She hadn’t had a glass of wine in a week, the bottle she had open in the fridge had probably gone off by now. It had been kind of acrid to begin with anyway. She only really liked champagne. She was going to need to quit drinking. It wouldn’t measure up anymore.

She didn’t notice him stopping, pausing. Fingers sliding down her cheek, brushing a strand of hair off her neck. “Hey, you ‘wake?”

“Yes.”

“You okay? You were lyin’ real still, I thought...w-well.”

She almost started laughing. She could have just started laughing until she cried, that he needed to ask. She didn’t think he was asking for her sake. “I’m fine. Don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

He smiled again, in a way that made up for the silence. “Gonna run outta ink.”

“We’ll get more. Don’t stop.”

Her other arm, a mermaid.  _ Her _ , as a mermaid, how. How did he see her that way. She could never have imagined it. God, she’d never looked that beautiful, how dare he. She was trying not to cry, staring at the inside of her arm. A mermaid curled in on herself, vulnerable, looking upward. How could he tell that about her, that she was secretly hiding in the depths of herself, and that she didn’t know what she’d do if she was ever found. How had he found her. It had to be an accident. She was terrified of the man who could know that it was true.

“Sorry, that’s dumb, ain’t it? I just thought it was pretty.”

“ I love it, though. Don’t stop.”  _ Don’t ever stop, oh god. Oh, I love you, I love you. If I’d known to I would have stolen you. I would have taken you and ran, before you could be anyone else’s but mine. I love and I hate that I have to share you. You’re too good for just me, but you should have been mine, even if I don’t deserve you. Before anyone could ever have hurt you, but if someone hadn’t, maybe you wouldn’t be this way. You certainly wouldn’t be mine now. _

He seemed to have run out of ideas, but he also seemed to be intently focused on her collarbone, some fascinating moral choice. He was measuring with his fingers, pressing off a count of fifty light touches across her throat with his fingertips. His lips moved when he counted, and he looked up, met her eyes. “You religious?”

She hadn’t been, three hours ago. Or if she had been, she was more so now.“Why?”

“Catholic, maybe?”

“My grandparents were Mennonites.”

“Hats an’ all?”

“I don’t think you know much about Mennonites.”

He grinned. “Nah. Guess I figure you don’t know much ‘bout Catholics. Oh well. My ma always wanted me to find a nice Catholic girl. I found an albino pyromaniac boy. Oops.”

“And me.”

“And you. Hold still.”

Leaning over her, now, so she could feel him breathing, see his face, his eyes. His eyelashes were lighter than his hair, the bridge of his nose was freckled, just very lightly. It would be moreso, by the time summer ended, a little bit of Noah reflected in his face. He wasn’t looking at her, not at  _ her _ face. At her throat, her neck, her collarbone. Fifty tiny roses, ringing her around, a tiny portrait, a woman’s face. Not hers, but she could guess whose. Then roses again, five prayers down her sternum. A cross, between the curve of her breasts.

“You ain’t actually s’posed to wear ‘em,” he said softly, his finger tracing the cross again, three times. “My ma’d give me hell. Disrespectful. So don’t tell anyone, okay.”

“I won’t. Well. Maybe Noah.”

“You can tell Noah.”

Speak of the devil, a knock on the door. Noah didn’t knock to  _ ask  _ if he could enter, but to announce that he was there and he was knocking and he was coming in, as he did.

The pair of them froze, like they had been caught at something. Kind of they had, they hadn't spared a thought for Noah in hours.

He stared a few moments, bit his lower lip. Smiled, slow and obscene. "Fuck's sake, Scout. Now I have to give poor Pauling a bath." 

  
  
  


 

 


	72. hate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows arc #2 - "shattered."

Noah didn’t go after people. People came to him.

That was how it had always been, anyway. Magnetism, he had that. He was gorgeous. He was fucking _stunning_ , and he was sat in a dark, dim bar. No hood, no glasses. A shirt that _fit him,_ showed off his arms. He had put on a little bit of weight around the middle but that would come off. He would start hitting the gym again, an all night gym, they had those in Seattle. He would be a night owl. He would keep his own damn hours, he would get up as the sun went down, and he would get a job that let him work nights. He would get a job as a corpsman, at a hospital, hauling bodies around. He had experience in being jaded, in the face of people who were suffering.

Shit. This was just supposed to be an experiment. Just to prove he still could, prove he still had it. Prove that there was someone else out there who would take him as he was.

No one had even bought him a decent drink yet. A martini, no, fuck off. A gin and tonic, did he look like he needed his mascara thinned? God. Vodka, neat. What the hell. A cosmopolitan, yes, congratulations, your gaydar is fully functional. Sorry, you idiot, but I am a top and not a bottom, fuck off out of here.

Scout drank rum and coke, like a child. Jack and coke, if there was no rum available. Once he’d poured a half can of stale, warm, shitty diet coke into a shot of Johnnie Walker, when they were toasting their first New Year’s, and Noah had nearly had a heart attack. Pauling had just laughed, clinked glasses with him, and told him to lighten up. God, but Pauling could be so fucking stupid.

No one had even bought him a beer.

Beer, whatever was cheapest. Noah had tried to go along with that, for a while and gone off about microbrews and porters and ales and stouts and hoppiness and mouthfeel. It drove him a little bit crazy that Scout liked beer. It was such an effortlessly masculine thing, and Noah had always hated beer. He he had never been able to keep his lip from curling when he drank it. Finally Scout had laughed and poured lemonade into a PBR, slid it across the table to him. Said, “oh, stick t’cider you big goddamn fruit.”

If anybody else called him a fruit, Noah would kill them. He didn’t even let Eleanor get away with that shit, Eleanor knew what it meant, knew how it was unbearable. He’d had Eleanor drop him off at a bar over an hour ago, and he was still nursing the glass of top shelf Scotch he’d bought and paid for himself. A double. Waiting for someone to ask the bartender what he was drinking, and to send him another, so he could throw it back, roll his shoulders, and ambush whoever’d sent it.

This was the other thing about Scout, he could handle his liquor. Drunk, properly drunk, Noah drawled and slurred and got weepy about his father. About his family. About Scout and everything that Noah had allowed to happen to him, and how he hadn’t been strong enough to stop it. Scout just got quieter, calmer, steadier. Numbed. Noah hated how quiet he could get, and he’d seen Scout get quiet as death.

Noah swallowed half of what remained, warm, in his glass. Scout had never liked scotch, thought it was stuck up and pretentious on top of being disgusting, but he would drink it if it was all they had. When Scout drank, _really_ drank, it was very, very deliberate. Probably the coke was just to take the edge off the immolating burn of liquor down his throat. There’d been a point in time when Scout had been drinking himself to sleep every night, then Scout had started drinking himself to death. Noah made him stop drinking himself to death, begged him not to. Because it was awful. It was just so, so awful, with the vomiting and the seizures and the way he got cold and shook and then…then. It never got easier. Even the morphine hadn’t been any better, not really. And Noah had never gotten jaded. Not really. Not like Scout had. He’d sworn off the morphine, and Noah had wished he hadn’t, but he was adamant.

Scout was almost never adamant about anything, he could usually be coaxed and cajoled and convinced into doing whatever Noah wanted. Eating. Bathing. Trying to sleep. He could be talked into letting Noah touch him, hold him, even when he couldn’t stand the way it felt to have hands on his bare skin, hated being restrained. Talk him into talking, then into bed, into sex. Into kissing and moaning and coming, and forcing that smile afterward, like it had helped, when of course it hadn’t. Nothing Noah had done had ever helped.

He needed the last of that drink, but when he went to lower the glass, he slammed it down onto the bar. Maybe an accident, but probably not. It shattered in his hand, the way everything did. Scared the shit out of half of the people in the room, not that there’d been many to choose from. The bartender had come over, startled. Fussing, not angry. Just apologetic, the damn glasses were flimsy as hell, not nice thick glass. Took Noah’s hand, clucked about the gash he’d sliced in it, palm down to his wrist. Wrapped a bar towel around it, brought him back through the kitchen, to the breakroom.

He had a soft voice, he chattered. He’d been avoiding Noah all evening, said he seemed like one of those guys who just had a lot of thinking to do, and that he hadn’t wanted to intrude. He’d been waiting to top up Noah’s glass, but he was one of those slow drinkers. Nothing wrong with that. Made his job easier, if he was honest.

Gosh, this is deep, do you think you need stitches? I can call you a cab, d’you want me to? Or, did you have a ride, were you going home with anyone? I’m off soon, did you want a lift? Least I could do, man, c’mon. You look like you’re from out of town, it’s no problem. Is that...would that be weird?

Shit. Shit, I’m sorry, that was a dumb question. God. Sorry, I had a long night. Shit for tips, tonight. Hey, let me just bandage it up for you, at least.

Noah had watched, out of the corner of his eye, the way the bartender had laughed and done tricks with the Boston Shaker, nimble. Quicksilver between his fingers, liquid light.The way he took orders, mixed drinks effortlessly, and leaned his elbows on the bar, talked to the people who ordered them, like he really cared what they had to say. The way he was sweet and funny and friendly. Crooked, hopeful smile. Familiar.

Blue eyes, blue grey eyes. Noah imagined staring into those eyes, imagined seeing them flicker through pain and fear and joy and ecstasy. Make them glassy, clouded, dead.

That voice, Noah could make him laugh, make him cry, make him scream. Beg. Noah could make him beg to _die_.

Nice hands, still holding his own, the bloodied red rag in his palm. Grabbing him around the wrists, corded muscle tightening against his pale, freckled palms, resistant. Then limp, then hopeless, surrendering.

Only strong in the one way, the most useless, pointless way of being strong. Brutal. Brutal, broken monster. The wrong eyes, the wrong voice, wrong hands.

Noah thanked him. It was all he was able to say. Well. No. Noah could also admit that he had a lot of thinking to do.

  
  


 


	73. but baby it's cold outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second Christmas in Oregon, a prompt for Teaforteu, who, incidentally, drew this lovely fanart of our OT3:  
> http://teafortteu.tumblr.com/post/103564147603/something-i-made-for-theoldaeroplane-and

It was sweet that they worried. He had to keep reminding himself of that, that it was sweet the way they worried. That his ma had done the exact same thing, been just the exact same way when he’d left home. Trying to be proud, be encouraging, but terrified. Terrified in a way that was hard not to find annoying. Because he wasn’t a baby, hadn’t been anyone’s baby in  _years_.

He was twenty-seven, or at least by the calendar he was twenty-seven. Twenty-eight in the spring, that was a fucker, he wasn’t thrilled about that. He and Pyro had been going around and around for years about whether time spent in respawn counted towards making them older or younger than they really were. Both, probably. So that was just great. He had always really wanted to ask Heavy about it. Heavy seemed like he would know, settle the argument. He had never been able to work up the nerve, to talk to Heavy, towards the end he’d just been incredibly afraid of him, more than ever before. Scout had never been sure of where the question would lead, or if he even wanted the answer, anyway.

You would think he was sixteen years old again, taking his mom’s beat up old Mercury into the city for the first time. He was pretty sure he’d caught sight of Pauling in the rearview mirror, sniffling into Pyro’s shoulder just before he turned the corner. Oh, for  _chrissakes_.

He’d been through more than he would ever tell his ma—more than Pyro would ever understand, and more than they would  _ever_  let Miss Pauling in on. Pyro had asked if they could tell her, shockingly early on. Scout had torn into him ferociously, told him in no uncertain terms that they would _never_ tell Miss Pauling. The both of them worried enough already, and more than anything else these days, that was exhausting.

It was December, would he be all right driving in winter? It was two hours into the city, he would make sure to be careful on the highway. Ice, snow, wind. It was cold, would the truck be okay? Maybe they should wait until they could get it tuned up in town, just to be safe. Would  _he_ be okay? Should he bring an extra jacket, maybe.  _Yeah, yeah, Pyro. I’m the one takes care of the goddamn truck, you don’t even know what the carburetor is. It’ll be fine. You’re from Tennessee, they even ever get fuckin’ snow in Tennessee? ‘Cuz sure as hell we got snow in Boston, lemme alone._

He would make sure he pulled over if he had to, though, if he felt like he might need a nap. That was fine, no shame in that. Not like he’d had a blackout in a year, anyway. How much sleep had he gotten? Miss Pauling had talked softly to him for over an hour, trying to get him to sleep last night, while Noah snored on his other side, one freckled hand stretched out across the mattress, curled around Scout’s wrist. He had very gently tolerated Miss Pauling’s inane rambling about Bidwell, keeping him awake. _One of these days me an’ Miss Pauling are gonna have a fight about the fact that she ain’t over Bidwell. Not by a long shot, hoo boy. That ain’t gonna be a good day. That is gonna be a real bad day._ Oh well. When she’d finally mumbled off to faint snoring of her own, he’d kissed her and closed his eyes, and gotten only slightly less sleep than he would have otherwise.

Eventually, as he was tugging his jacket on, lacing up his boots, they’d just begged him not to go. They seemed to have independently come to the same conclusion together, which was that something horrible would happen without them. Pauling had said she’d go along, it was fine, she would just wait in the truck. She’d bring the knitting she was working on. Scout had managed not to say, sarcastically, that the only thing he imagined would help in Pauling’s ongoing struggle with knitting would be to try to do it in a moving vehicle. Miss Pauling got carsick. Miss Pauling also undid her bra beneath her shirt, slipped it off and pulled it out through one of the sleeves of her sweater. Then looked up with her most adorable, inviting smile. He might not have been able to ignore the outline of her breasts beneath the ribbed knit of her turtleneck, if it hadn’t been for Pyro.

Scout had only narrowly managed not to punch Pyro in the face, for suggesting that he needed any help Christmas shopping for the pair of them. It was astonishing, sometimes, how mean Pyro could be, just offhandedly. None of that was long sustained trauma or gas-induced brain damaged or rage either, it was just the shit he said when he was being a stuck up bastard. Scout loved him to death and more than that, probably, but Pyro was unbelievably lucky to have found somebody who would put up with his shit. He was lucky to have found  _two_ people, the damn lucky bastard.

That he’d tried to soften the blow hadn’t really counted for much of anything, because Pyro was very annoying when he was trying to be sexy. He was very good at it, which was what made it the most annoying. He’d put himself squarely into the gradually shrinking bubble of Scout’s minimum requirement for personal space, slipped his hands inside Scout’s jacket and into the warm spot between his shoulderblades. Kneading with his knuckles, christ goddamn.  _Fuck off, Pyro, c’mon, I wanna get back before dark._  “It’s just… well. I mean, you know I’m so picky. I would hate for you to get something that was…I mean, just something that was disappointing. It’s not your fault! It’s all me, you know, not you.”

It was a good thing he’d opened his mouth, because Scout was on the very brink of just staying to make the pair of them  _cut it the fuck out_. Then sneaking out later, and the hell with them both. So, okay, maybe a bit more like when he’d been sixteen.

He’d finally snapped at them both, as they said they just really didn’t think it was a good idea. “I’m just going into town. Oh my god, you pair of goddamn mother hens, I fuckin’ swear. Lemme alone guys, come on. It’s Christmas. Lemme take the truck and just have maybe eight goddamn hours on my own, okay? You can sell every other damn thing you got me, fuck, throw it in the pond, I don’t care. Christ.”

And then they’d given in. Pauling had even handed back the sparkplug she’d pulled from the truck’s engine and Pyro had shrugged, the way he did when he pretended he didn’t care.

It was quiet on the highway. It would be loud in the city, and Scout adored cities. It had been far, far too long since he’d just had a city to live in, with everything easy to get to and noise and people and sound and colour to drown out everything that he’d been hearing in his head, in the quiet of the country.

Sometimes home was the most stressful place he could imagine. Everyone had always said he talked too much, but no one ever listened to all the things he wasn’t saying in the silences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's that? Oh, you didn't KNOW there was a ton of fanart available for PPS I love you? Oh, but there's a lot, though. You didn't know we occasionally take little warm up prompts? Shucks. Jeez. Our bad. You maybe wanna mosey on over to our respective tumblrs. Pemm can be found at theoldaeroplane.tumblr.com. I can be found at 1fort-2fort-redfort-blufort.tumblr.com. We have got some really interesting tags, boy howdy. Oh, and you know what, I bet you guys might be interested in...hmm. Well. Hmm. It's hard to say. 
> 
> Are you the sort of people who'd be curious about an AU-ish crossover between Hold Still's Universe and Pemm's TIAS? More than just the fact that Clarisse the chicken is cross dimensional. Ever wondered how the arsonist would interact with Scout and Noah? That's gotta be some really interesting shit. I haven't even read TIAS and that's gotta just be fascinating. Maybe there's even a tag for it. For all six parts of it. Man. You guys probably wouldn't be interested though. http://theoldaeroplane.com/tagged/tias-hs-crossover/chrono
> 
> Probably you wouldn't wanna know about all our little drabbles and meta, either. Probably you wouldn't wanna know what happened when Edie met Noah, or what Pauling, Scout, and Noah would look like as a coroner and two detectives in a gritty crime AU. There are tags for those things, too. Maybe some day there will even be a masterpost. Just saying. It's all there. Maybe you wanna check out the pps I love you tag. Maybe that's a good place to start.


	74. bathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> directly follows rosary

Once, her truck had gotten stuck on the side of the highway after a particularly bad rain, one tire sunk and spinning impotently in the mud. She absolutely could have handled that alone. She could’ve walked until she found a house, she could have called a tow-truck, she could’ve waited two or three hours, and she would have been fine. Probably she would have eaten all the ice cream she’d picked up at the grocery store, to spare it from melting, and then thrown up, but other than that she would have been fine.

But Scout and Noah had been with her, and they had been _amazing_. Pauling was reminded again and again and again and again, just how wonderful it was to have the pair of them. They were ridiculous and they were hers. She’d been ushered out of the truck, Scout had graciously dusted off a milk crate they had in the back, dropped his jacket on it, and sat her down at the side of the road, out of the way and to spare her from muddying her feet. He’d requested the keys, climbed into the driver’s seat. Noah had circled around to the back, pulled on a pair of work gloves from the glove compartment. He’d gotten his hands under the raw, rusty bottom edge of the truck’s bed, and he’d just lifted it straight, just a couple inches. Pauling would have given every cent she had to have been able to see his arms while he did it, but as usual, Noah was swathed in a hoodie. Scout put the truck in gear and lurched the whole assembly forward, just enough to clear the slick, sticky patch of mud. They hadn’t said a word to each other.

God, the two of them were almost too perfect to tarnish with a threesome. She hadn’t let that stop her before, though, and she certainly didn’t let it stop her on the side of the highway. The ice cream melted anyway.

So, Noah could lift a truck. She had seen that happen, that was a fact.  She’d seen Noah go from dead calm to murderously angry in seconds. She had also seen Noah punch through a door, she’d seen Noah narrowly manage to avoid throwing Scout down a flight of stairs. It had more to do with Scout than it did with Noah that he hadn’t. So there were risks, in being around Noah.

They were absolutely risks worth taking, but risks nonetheless.

Because Pauling got to sit in a warm, steamy bathtub with him, quietly crying, while Noah gently washed dark lines of beautiful ink from her skin. He sat behind her, they were both comfortably, indifferently naked. Noah claimed to have a cold, but he’d also gotten bored of having a cold, so it was mostly cleared up by now.

He broke the silence, eventually, just trying to make conversation. “I used to do this for Scout, actually. Back on RED. Showers.”

Pauling shivered, though the water was still steaming hot, as he picked up a soap dish and used it to pour water over her head, soaking her hair. “I would pay _money_ to do this for Scout. I don’t think he’d let me. It’s been...god. Months, now. Half a year almost, since the three of us started. You know. He still doesn’t like to take his shirt off in front of me. It’s like he doesn’t want me looking at him too closely.”

“Mm.” He rubbed soap across her shoulders, lathering them up for the third or fourth time. Just gently touching her, stroking her skin with those strong, dangerous hands. “He might, if you asked him. I only started, with him, because...with the blackouts. It got dangerous. He cracked his head open, once, bad concussion. Out cold on the tiles for ages. Hypothermia. Was an hour before Demo found him.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

Noah fell abruptly silent, like he hadn’t meant to tell her about it. There were only faint smudges of ink left on her skin anymore. She would have just gone and made every line of it permanent, if she’d been braver, if Noah hadn’t known to steal her out of her bedroom, taking her gently by the hand. He made the sort of obscene jokes he always did, lightly, flirting. _Where in the world did your pants go, Pauling, love? Bless your heart_. Like she wasn’t shell-shocked, like he couldn’t tell.

Noah had shut the bathroom door softly, started to run water for a bath. They’d invested fairly heavily in the bathroom. It was a big room, cozy. Pristine. Many towels. There was a settee. It was the only room in the house that Pauling had insisted remain mostly white washed. Noah had swatched and sampled and colour-coordinated every other room in the house, and she had given ground, and it was beautiful. But her grandparents’ house had been white all through, and she had wanted…well. It wasn’t just her house. Anyway, she’d been glad of the settee, she needed to sit down. When the bath was full, Noah flicked the clasp of her bra open, one handed, helped her into the water.

God, and they hadn’t even _done_ anything. She hadn’t, anyway. Pauling didn’t think she liked to be passive. It wasn’t really something she did, she liked to be in control. Not dominant, necessarily, just...active. She felt strange, drained. Like she hadn’t just lain still, beneath the barest touch of the pen tip, caressing her skin. “I feel…” she trailed off. Shook her head. There weren’t words.

Noah squeezed her shoulders, slipped his arms around her and pulled her back against him, leaning deeper into the warm water, just holding her against his bare skin, the damp hair on his chest beaded with water.“Oh, I know. No, believe me, I know.”

“Has he...anything like that...with you?”

“Not with ink, my skin’s too sensitive. A paintbrush, once, though. One of my best, had it since college. Badger hair. I still have it, I don't paint with it. I think I’ll have it forever.”

“ _God_ .” A little bit angry, still emotional, overwhelmed. “I never...I _never knew_ he...I thought _you_ were intense. You _are_ intense, Noah, oh my god. You could snap my neck with one hand. You choked me until I passed out, that one time, it was _amazing_ . But... _that_ ...I’ve _never_ …”

He was rubbing a hand down her thigh, over the memory of the map that had been drawn there. Quiet, introspective. “No, I hadn’t either. It really...we started out, and it was just sex. Good sex! He’s great for fucking, no two ways around it. But if he goes past that, though. I didn’t _know_ there was anything past that. I thought, you date somebody, you get close, you like them, maybe you go out a few times and you hook up. Maybe you just hook up that first time, that’s how _we_ did it. He never liked that, he insisted we do better. I’d never let myself get _vulnerable_ with anybody, I hate even just the thought of it.”

“He sneaks up on you,” Pauling agreed, lacing her fingers through Noah’s. “We don’t need to talk about this. God. This is so weird. This is a weird conversation.”

“It really isn’t. We talked about rules, he and I. Back...last summer. The same way you and I did, I guess. The first rule is just that I love him."

“Lucky you.”

Noah laughed, kissed her neck. Slid his fingers beneath the weight of her breasts, ran his thumbs over her nipples. Pulled her closer, against him. Her back arched and an involuntary gasp slipped out. “You too. Scout wouldn’t sleep with you if he didn’t love you, you have to remember that about him.”

Pauling shook her head, frustrated. She refused to be distracted by his body against her, though she’d tensed and tightened, uncontrollably, uncomfortably, like a spring wound too tight. She hadn’t expected to be frustrated. She hadn’t expected to be frightened, and filled with that hollow feeling, once the ink had washed off her skin. “No. No, I absolutely did not sign on for that. I’m just...I’m filling a role. Balancing some things out. It’s supposed to be just sex, for me. I don’t think I want him to do that again, no one makes me feel that way. I don’t…oh god, I love him. Oh, Jesus, no. Oh, I can’t...you and him...there’s no room for me.”

He laughed at her. “You’re very small, Pauling. Not like you’d take up much space.” Noah was kissing her again, gently, her neck, her shoulders. Oh, god, and she hated it when Noah was gentle. Noah was not supposed to be gentle, Noah was scary. She was supposed to be afraid of Noah, it was dangerous to trust Noah, Noah was a beautiful _trap_. And then, more seriously, with love, “Of course there’s room for you.”

She was shaking her head now, pushing away. Getting out of the water, lightly darkened by the black ink she’d left behind. Wrapping herself up in a towel, getting swallowed up in it, hiding. “Don’t let him do that again. Tell him not to. I-I can’t talk to him right now, please. You need to tell him not to do that. Don’t...don’t make him feel bad. He...it’s fine. I just, I can’t. I don’t want that. I'm not going to fuck him again. I don’t, I can’t.”

Noah was looking at her, surprised and a little sad. Pity. She looked away, refused to let his eyes crawl over her skin. “Pauling…”

“No. Leave me alone. That’s my rule. Don’t make this complicated. Just...fucking. Leave _me_ out of it. That’s all I wanted, that’s all I want.”

She fled to her bedroom, and thanked god that Scout was gone. Back downstairs, making soup for Noah. Noah was better. Pauling felt sick.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe you wanna rummage back through this big long thing, and see if you can find the only time Pauling tells Scout she loves him. Here's a hint, she's only done it once. Here's another hint, it doesn't count when she tells it to Noah.


	75. nine years

Noah had always been the less coherent of the two of them, drunk. Now he had taken Scout’s hand, scooted closer to him on the couch—no, hell, just outright buried his face in Scout’s shoulder and dug his fingers into Scout’s shirt. Scout let him without complaint, leaned his head against Noah’s. For a few seconds the pair of them just stayed like that, knotted up in one another without her once again.

Then Noah spoke. “D, d’you … Scout, fuck, do you—do you want to tell her now?” Noah’s accent was bleeding out, that Southern drawl he had that was barely detectable sober. "I … I wanna tell her. S’been four years and we didn’t, we haven’t told her anythin‘, baby, it’s been n, _nine years_ and we haven’t told _anyone_ , oh, God. I want us t’tell her.“ Silence. ”… H-he isn’t here anymore, he can’t do anythin’ to us. Please. Please, Scout, ’m so sick of this. Please."

Pauling held her breath, suddenly reeling.

She wasn't stupid. All the accidental hints about the things Scout had gone through, the thing with the needles, the thing with the butcher. The way they'd both been acting since Heavy's visit. Pauling could add two and two and get a lot more than just four. So it was New Year's Eve, and she'd gotten the pair of them roaring drunk, and then gone and spoiled what had been an otherwise wonderful evening by asking:

_What did Medic do to you?_

Scout had not looked at her since she’d asked. Noah kept shooting her wary, nervous glances. Oh, God, what had she just gotten herself into. Why had she asked. She didn’t _want_ to know.

She had to, though. It had been long enough.

And finally Scout took a deep and slow and careful breath, and he said very evenly, calmly, not slurred at all, “Yeah. Yeah, we should tell her.”

“Don’t feel like you have to.”

Scout scoffed. “S’the thing, there, we. We kinda do. I think … I think maybe if we’d told you … back when it started, maybe it wouldn’t’a happened none at all, I mean.” He cleared his throat. “Maybe you would’a b, believed us. An’ maybe if we’d’a told you first thing when you let us come up here maybe … fuck. Maybe a lotta things would’a been better. I, I think about that a lot. Miss Pauling, you ain’t gonna like it.”

 _Scout for the love of God, I_ ** _know_** _that, I’ve been avoiding it as much as you have, damn it, damn all three of us—_ “I know. It’s not about me.”

Noah had sunk one hand into Scout’s hair, now, screwed his eyes shut. Scout glanced down at his arm, at the wrist wraps he never removed. “… Jesus. Jesus Christ, I don’t know how to start. P—Pyro?”

“I don’t want to,” Pyro whispered. “God, I will if you can’t but I don’t want to.”

“… it started with Pyro, anyway,” Scout said softly, and still he wouldn’t look at Miss Pauling. “Back at Barnblitz.”

He told her about Barnblitz, and at first she didn’t understand. Pauling knew about Barnblitz, she’d had to handle the collateral damage. It was just an early form of Pyro’s episodes, she had thought.

Pyro had never once had a violent fit either before or after Barnblitz, Scout said. Pyro had been gentle and soft-spoken, and a flirt, yes, but in a quieter way. Pyro had been scared out of his mind after Barnblitz, Scout said, he was twenty years old and completely alone in the world and he couldn’t figure out what had happened to him. There was no precedent.

And then Scout started to tell her a completely different story. At first Pauling had thought he was simply that drunk, going off on a complete tangent, because this story was about the medigun RED had funded development for, and about tetanus and rabies.

He had to stop when he reached the part about Medic’s operating room, and about his leg, and Pyro took over as Scout curled into him and chewed his lip so he wouldn’t start to heave again. By then Pauling had gone quite numb, more or less everywhere. She wasn’t even sure if she was still breathing.

Respawn. The limp. Pyro’s promise, Pyro alone in the woods, Pyro finding Scout and Medic fighting on the floor of the operating room. “And he got to me and he gassed me again,” Pyro finished softly. “And he said he’d keep doing it, if Scout didn’t … cooperate. Five years,” he mumbled, clumsily wrapping Scout up in his arms. “Over and over again. Just to keep me safe. And it didn’t even _fucking_ matter because I’m a monster now anyway. I, I had to mercy-kill him so many times. You have no idea.”

Noah was crying now, openly. Scout lay still and glassy-eyed against him, like he wasn’t really there. Probably he wasn’t.


	76. promise

**RED BASE, 197X**

* * *

 

 

Noah kept promises. It was important to him, it was something he’d been raised to be conscious of. Don’t say you’ll do something if you can’t, or won’t. Don’t disappoint. Don’t lie.

Noah was fucking dead, as far as Pyro was concerned.

A year and a half had passed and Pyro had watched his fume-born anxiety and paranoia start to slip away. It slid off him like an old skin, and he wasn’t sure he liked the person who wore the new one. The Pyro that had been hiding under the scales had diamond edges and a hollow face and a temper shorter than a candle wick. Gone were the fears and the depressions, replaced by ferocious rages that he couldn’t control. The new Pyro had to look very, very hard to find compassion in himself, sometimes. And the new Pyro didn’t really care about promises.

Today Scout was blind. Or that was what Medic had said. Scout was, currently, still unconscious. Medic had been sending him back unconscious more and more lately, and it was sort of a relief, even if it made getting Scout back to his room unnoticed by the rest of the team a lot harder. It meant Pyro didn’t have to sit with him for hours, saying the same shit over and over. None of it meant anything. Things wouldn’t be okay. Pyro couldn’t protect him. What the fuck was he supposed to do, just feed him more and more false hope until he choked on it? Just suffocating him would have been kinder.

He’d fantasized about it. Not that he hadn’t suffocated Scout before, sometimes there was nothing else to be done. But. Killing Scout, permanently. End his suffering. Fuck, he had three or four scenarios planned out. A fifth if he counted the really bad one, the one he’d come up with one especially bad, drunken night when Scout kept him awake for thirty-six straight hours, the one with the rope and the fire and the knife. But he didn’t like to count that one, because it was horrific.

The others weren’t horrific. They were coping mechanisms. They all involved going away somewhere, somewhere _nice,_ for fuck’s sake, somewhere really nice. Out of respawn range, obviously. Somewhere isolated, with a view. Somewhere with Scout, and _nice_ drinks, not the fucking shit Red Shed that was all you could ever find around here, and a picnic. And they’d have dinner, and sex, the really good sex they hadn’t had in over a year, where they didn’t have to stop in the middle because someone got sick or started crying. Amazing sex. And then Scout would fall asleep, and Pyro would kill him, because otherwise of course it would all be ruined in the morning when they had to go back to RED. And then Pyro would kill himself, because he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

It was all just fantasy. The new Pyro was a realist. He couldn’t have killed Scout for good and he knew it. He had a dim memory, even, of drunkenly begging Scout to tell him if was ever really, really going to end it, to promise he would take Pyro out with him. It was the most selfish thing he’d ever asked and he didn’t even care. Scout had said yes anyway. Of course he had.

All of that and Pyro couldn’t even keep one goddamn promise to him.

“Don’t go,” Scout said, when he woke up. “Please don’t. Fuck. I, I can’t see nothin’, he ain’t never done this before, don’t leave me like this none, please.”

His hands were clammy, like they usually were anymore. Pyro fucking hated how they felt on his own hands, but what else could he do but take it? And he nodded at first, because he wasn’t sure if he could keep the venom out of his voice, only to realize it was a useless gesture when Scout said weakly, “Pyro…?”

“I won’t,” he said. “I won’t, Scout, I’m here.”

To be fair, he was there. He was there for a whole two hours before he decided he would fucking snap his own neck before spending another minute shut away in this stupid fucking stifling room, he had to be locked up away out of sight enough already. Out of the sun, out of his parents’ lives, out of having a normal relationship.

And Scout was asleep again anyway. And Pyro had gotten very good at sneaking away from him.

 _Just for a couple of minutes_ , Pyro told himself as he slunk away, down the hall. _I’ll be back soon enough. He’s fine._

(Scout awoke, some five minutes later, to a room that did not answer his increasingly panicked calls. A room that was empty of anyone who might care that he desperately needed something to drink, or that his headache was blossoming into the kind of migraine that left you in crippling agony for days, or that he was edging closer and closer to a panicked breakdown with each second.)

(Perhaps there had never been anyone who cared about those things in that room at all.)


	77. carrion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written from Pyro's perspective.

Once--just the once--Pauling asked me about my family, beyond my sister. I laughed and told her I didn't have one, that they had just gotten sick of me seducing the other angels up in Heaven and thrown me down to earth. I like it better than the truth. They're both falls from grace, anyway.

The last thing my mother ever said to me was that I was a freak, an abomination, a waste of a life. She died last year, cancer, and even for as much as Eleanor fought him my father wouldn't allow me to come to the funeral. I had to go on my own, afterward, and I didn't bring flowers, just my partners, since they wouldn't hear of me going on my own. So all three of us went, just to cement that everything she'd said about me was true. A freak and an abomination and a waste of a life.

The graveyard was very far from the city, on a high and lonely hill. When we got there, as we made our way up from the parking lot, I saw a vulture sitting in a tree just inside the gate. I would have sworn it looked like it was waiting for something--its next meal, I guess.

Heavy came to visit, a few days ago. It was hard at first. Scout didn't want to go near him and truthfully neither did I, but it's much easier for me to fake pleasantries because that's what you get taught to do when you're of high society. And it was easier than I thought it would be, because I'd forgotten what a gentleman Heavy is. His name is Mikhail, and he was enchanted by our little farm, and he must have realized very quickly that there was something wrong with Scout because whenever they were in the same room together Heavy became very careful and deliberate about everything he did. I'd never call him a gentle giant, I've seen him fight too many times for that, but it was nice to be reminded that out of everyone on the team, Heavy seemed to be one of the most good-hearted.

I want to think that, anyway. But out of everyone on the team, it was Heavy that spent the most time with Medic. I had always wondered if he knew. If Medic told him. And I'm never going to ask, because if he did know and he never did anything about it I would kill him. End of story.

I say that like I've got any right to be angry. Jesus.

What I was saying is that after a few days Scout started talking to him. Things got less tense. It was really nice for a while. But then at dinner last night Pauling asked him about Medic, because you can't talk about one and not the other.

And Medic's been doing *great.* He's been publishing in journals and giving lectures. Has some insanely prestigious practice in Germany, I don't know *how.* And Pauling was happy for him, because of course she was. She doesn't know.

Scout held up remarkably well until she said something about maybe going to see him sometime. Then he "accidentally" knocked over his full drink, and shooed everyone out of the dining room to clean it up, flatly refusing Pauling when she said she'd help with the dishes, and looked like he would hit me if I tried to stay. So the three of us went out to the sitting room, and I had to pretend I was happy for the sadistic monster that tortured Scout. And I fucking did. I can't lie for shit, but I can fake just about anything.

Scout was gone when I excused myself and looked into the kitchen. I wanted to make sure he was okay, and more selfishly I wanted to comfort him and reassure myself that all the smiles and bullshit I'd spat out were lies. But he wasn't there, and as I was standing there staring at the stack of half-finished dishes and dirty counters something settled over me like some vast carrion bird. I couldn't help Scout, I couldn't expose Medic for the horror he is. I had never been able to do either of those things, especially not the first one, no matter how many times I told myself I could. What good was I? None, obviously. Freak, abomination, waste. Look at where following my heart had got me. They were my thoughts, but I would have sworn that I heard them in my mother's voice.

I went to bed--in Pauling's old room, with the old boxspring, not our ridiculous two-mattress setup that Heavy doesn't know about. I locked the door and didn't answer it when Pauling came knocking a little while later.

I didn't sleep. I didn't do anything at all, not even when the next morning Pauling came and sat outside the room for an hour calling to me, asking me what was wrong, saying Heavy was leaving and didn't I want to come see him off?

I scarcely heard her anyway. It's difficult to focus on anything else when you've got a vulture hissing in your ear.


	78. citations

**RED BASE - 197X**

* * *

 

Miss Pauling had been there at the interview, of course. Scout was the second-to-last merc hired; it had been down between him and another New Englander. Scout got the job because the other man was deemed too violent.

That wound up being the joke, of course, when BLU started submitting complaints. They had signed up to fight, they said. Torture wasn’t in their contracts. Miss Pauling had expected the culprit to be Spy, or maybe even Engineer because he’d been a little weird ever since he’d lost his hand, or possibly Medic—but Scout? Scout did too much damage to even have time for torture, she thought. She’d seen what his scattergun could do up close, and if he got you in the head with a bat then you weren’t going to be getting up again soon.

But every single complaint BLU sent in was about the RED Scout. He’d hammered old railroad spikes into one of his bats, he’d started loading his scattergun with fiberglass and rusty nails. He’d found a cleaver somewhere and had become horrifyingly good at throwing it. He was not out here to kill, the BLU Sniper told her one day, he was here to maim.

Miss Pauling had never had to give any of the mercs a citation before. The day the RED Scout took forty-five minutes to beat the BLU Pyro to death changed that. She’d tried to keep it professional. Told him he was maybe a little overenthusiastic, said maybe he should stick to accomplishing the mission. He’d given a laugh that sounded entirely _wrong_ on him. “Yeah! Yeah sure, Miss Pauling, real sorry yeah, yeah I got it. I got it. Don’t worry.”

He got three more citations before the week was out, and the Administrator was smoking slightly more than usual.

Five was the limit, and even then the first discipline was technically supposed to be at three. Miss Pauling didn’t even know what happened at five, there was nothing in any of the official documents about it. It had simply never _happened._ The Administrator made an impatient gesture when Pauling asked her, and told her to come up with something appropriate.

They couldn’t really afford to lose Scout, was the thing. Putting in a new teammate so late into the game would unbalance things, and TFI was teetering dangerously as it was. When Pauling called him into the office she still wasn’t entirely sure what to say.

He was half an hour late, and when he got there he looked like shit. Black circles under his eyes, a humorless stare, cracked lips. Couldn’t hold still, moreso than Pauling thought seemed normal. “What?” was the first thing out of his mouth as he dropped heavily into the chair in front of the desk. “… frickin’, sorry, miss. Miss Pauling. I ain’t, I didn’t sleep much last night. What did you want me for?”

Miss Pauling had taken one look at him and all the heart had gone out of whatever she’d half-planned. “Scout, are you sure you should be here? You don’t look good.”

“Me, what, ‘m fine.“ Back straightened, eyes blinked hard to clear themselves. He flashed her the emptiest grin Pauling had ever seen. ”I’m freakin’ great. You’re lookin’ real good, too.”

Well, he was still flirting with her. That was a good sign, probably. “It’s about your field performance. Same as last time. We really need you to be focusing on the mission goals, Scout, not on getting kills. This isn’t a game.”

He stared at her blankly for a few seconds before shaking himself, slow and heavy, like some sort of animatronic. “S, sure, I been, I’m doin’ that. S’fine.”

“No, it’s really not,” she said, picking through her file on him. Truthfully she hasn’t even been giving him enough citations. The last week and a half she’d been studying him on the cameras, and his assaults were simply horrifying. Guts strewn out, legs shot apart, once he’d forced the bat down the BLU engineer’s throat until his neck split open. She had stills of all of it, neatly filed together with terse, typed descriptions of the scenes. “I’m worried about you, Scout, if this keeps up we might have to take you off the team.”

“Y, you what? What? N-no way. What?”

Pauling shut the folder. “I’m afraid it’s an option we’re having to consider. This is very serious, Scout, you’re disrupting—”

“Thought I was fuckin bein’ paid to kill people here,” he snapped in a tone of voice she had never heard from him before. “Is—s, sorry. Don’t mind me. I just—ain’t nothing’s changed. BLU’s a bunch’a sissies is all.”

She watched him for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Scout,” she said at last, “are you sure everything’s alright? This is really outside the bounds of normal for you.”

He only looked at her once after she spoke. He looked older than the twenty-three or so she knew he was. Then he glanced away. “Yeah. Yeah ’m, ‘m fine. S’fine. Jus’ been real tired lately, ’m sorry. I’ll dial it back, reel it in.”

Pauling smiled and nodded, and told him he was a valuable team member, like she was supposed to, and walked him back to the door. Thinking back on it, later, she would decide the strange hitch in his gait was just her imagination.


	79. trespasser

Their system relied entirely on one of them being in their right mind when the other went off. It worked, too, or at least it had never failed, in the years they’d used it.

A pity, that.

Pyro had lost it again. He’d knocked Scout over trying to get out from under the house porch, tore a few boards down with him. They’d just been trying to clean it out under there, make room for a few things. Of course it was almost sundown that he broke for the woods, of course Scout had been too slow to catch hold of him as he bolted.

He watched in resignation as Pyro disappeared into the underbrush. Even in his prime, before the limp, Pyro had always been able to at least not fall too far behind him at a full run; Scout didn’t have a dream of catching up to him these days. With a groan and a sigh, he put down the hammer he’d been prying rusty nails out with and went after him.

Pyro left a good trail, at least. Crashing wildly through the underbrush made it easy to follow him. It was when he went to ground that was hard to find him. It was amazing how well he could hide when he wanted. Once Scout had found him ten feet above the ground, treed like a raccoon. Pyro didn’t have a fear of heights, not like Miss Pauling did, but he’d only ever been up high on buildings. Trees with swaying branches were another story. It had taken an hour to coax him down.

Now Scout was kicking through the thick of the woods, feeling stupid. He should’ve told Miss Pauling what was going on, now she’d worry. Hell. And he was starting to think he’d lost the trail. Probably he should have begun looking up in the trees again. “ _Pyro!_ ” he called once more through cupped hands, and received no answer.

Heck. He stopped, looking around. He was just about to pick a new direction and start walking when the boom of a distant gunshot split the air.

It’s amazing, the things that never leave you. The wild crack of the gun caused an instant mental shift, made him scramble for the nearest cover, the sniper was gunning for him, shit, shit. Oh no. Oh God. Scout could feel the gasps of terror begin to rip at his throat, he didn’t want to die again, he hadn’t died in almost three years, he never wanted to respawn again. Oh, God, no one was supposed to be in these woods, no one was supposed to know they were here. His hands had started to shake. Medic was going to come back. He had to _run._

So he ran.

 

* * *

 

Pauling had heard the gunshot. Pauling had, very slowly and deliberately, put down the little abstract art-pattern-thing she was trying to do, smoothed out her skirt with a sigh, and went to go and find Pyro’s axe.

It was past dark, now. She brought a flashlight, though the moon was bright enough and the late-autumn foliage thin enough that she had no need of it. The boys had been nowhere in sight, but probably they were off in the barn, or back in the bedroom, or something. They didn’t need to know about this, or at least Scout didn’t. Noah wouldn’t say anything.

She had her axe and a little shovel and a hunter-orange vest and a syringe of arsenic. Poaching was illegal, after all.

Wouldn’t take her longer than a few hours, she thought. She’d be back by morning.

 

* * *

 

He’d found Scout. That, that was good, that seemed good, probably Scout shouldn’t have been out here, that was weird? Scout had come tearing out of nowhere and nearly slammed right into Pyro, had stared at him with saucer-plate eyes, and tried to turn and run again an instant later. Pyro had been too fast for him, Pyro had reached out and grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him back behind the fallen tree he’d claimed.

Time had passed. Pyro wasn’t sure how much. Time was hard. Scout kept dropping in and out of shaking fits and kind of not being there, he didn’t like it, Pyro felt like Scout should be the one in charge. Pyro didn’t know what was going on. It was dark and they were outside and he didn’t have a lighter. He wanted to ask Scout if he had a lighter but his words weren’t working.

Probably, Pyro thought as he dragged a whimpering, resisting Scout through the trees, they should head for home. Yes, that seemed like a good idea. He wasn’t sure where home was, but over there—between the big rock and the mushroom patch—that seemed as good an option as any.

Off they went. It would be nice if Scout would stop crying. He might attract more monsters.

 

* * *

 

Scout could barely think. This one was bad, this was probably the worst one he’d ever had, the nastiest, longest panic attack anyone anywhere had ever had ever.

Pyro was here. He had no idea why or how Pyro was here but God, oh, God he wanted to get away from him. At least he wanted him to stop _touching_ him. But Pyro had a grip like a fucking vice and acted now like he couldn’t hear a word out of Scout’s mouth, and that set off _more_ panicking, and on and on it went until Scout was literally too tired to put up a fight. He was reduced to limping after Pyro as best as he could, letting himself be pulled zig-zag through the forest. He wished Miss Pauling was here. Miss Pauling wasn’t insane, and she didn’t panic.

He was so tired, he tried a few times to just sit down in the middle of everything. Pyro would stop and drag him back up. He was thinking about trying to chew off his own hand when Pyro stopped, hunched, and started growling at the night. A crunching ahead of them Scout hadn’t noticed before suddenly stopped. Staring past Pyro, he caught a flash of orange. A small black shape.

A low snarl. Scout’s heart started thundering again, Christ, now what, wolves? What?

Oh. No. Just Pyro, he thought, as Pyro launched himself forward with a scream.

 

* * *

 

Miss Pauling was not afraid of poachers. She was not afraid of wolves. There weren’t many things she was afraid of anymore.

When she heard the growl she had thought _wolf_ and grabbed her shovel, closer to hand than the axe. When it lunged at her on its hind legs she had thought _werewolf?_ and yelped a little and swung blindly at its face. It gave a strangled cry and lurched sideways, hitting a tree. Pauling slammed the shovel into its side and it gurgled, dropping, and then someone screeched her name.

A second one coming at her. Not a werewolf. A skinny, tall shape that panted and babbled and begged. “Don’t, oh my God don’t, Pauling, Miss Pauling it’s only us, s’just Pyro is all, please, you’ll kill him, we’re sorry, please.”

That stayed her from going for the axe. “S— _Scout?_ ”

“Yeah, yeah s’me, s’me an’ Pyro oh God is he breathin‘? Fuck. Fuck he h-had a, a thing happen, he went runnin’ off in here and he wasn’t talkin’ at all an’ I don’t think he’s back t’bein’ hisself yet, please don’t with the axe, I-I um, I went after him an’ I don’t … I ain’t sure what happened. G, gunshot. I think. Panicked. Sorry. Oh, Jesus.”

Pauling stared at him in disbelief for a few seconds, and then fumbled to turn on her flashlight and point it at Pyro. He was curled in a knot on the ground, protecting his head, whimpering. “Oh, boys,” she breathed, “oh, hell, I hit him in the face. Dammit. _Shit._ ”

 

* * *

 

The poacher was not heard from again. Pauling didn’t have time to go after him herself, not between trying to help Scout drag Noah back into the house and making sure his nose wasn’t broken. He had a huge gash on his face from the shovel’s edge, but that was all. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with the two of you,” she said faintly, holding Noah’s hand as Scout fussed over the rapidly-forming bruises on his cheekbones. “God, what if I’d hit him with the axe? Oh, hell. I wish you’d come and got me.”

“’M sorry,” he mumbled for the _n_ th time, now climbing onto the bed to curl up beside Noah with his head on his chest. “I shoulda, I know, I just … I thought I could, y, y’know. Handle it. Myself.”

“You don’t have to do it yourself.”

“Yeah well maybe I wanted to,” he muttered, looking away. “Always got you swoopin’ in, savin’ us. Maybe oughta we’d better be left getting each other fuckin’ ruined, maybe’d teach us a lesson.”

“Don’t, Scout, don’t, please.” It was four in the morning. All Pauling wanted to do was sleep, right there in the chair if it came to that. Navigating Scout’s self-destructiveness was the one thing that could have exhausted her more than she already was. “Please? I’m sorry.” For what, she wasn’t entirely sure, but if it would get her to sleep quicker… “We’re both tired, let’s come back to this in the morning.”

But that seemed to mollify him. His face softened. “… yeah. Yeah, s’been, it’s been a real long night. I didn’t mean t’snap none. ’M sorry.” He nudged the unconscious Noah over as much as he dared, beckoned Pauling over.

With a heady sense of relief she got to her feet and circled around the bed to join him. Even on his and Noah’s mattress it was a tight fit, but Scout wrapped his arms around her and muttered apologies into her hair and kissed her forehead.

In the morning, Noah would moan and wail over the huge bruises discoloring his face, and Scout would bitch endlessly about being dragged through the woods while he made breakfast, and probably Pauling would have to lecture them both, but for now they were both back and safe and alive, and she was content with that.


	80. shrinking violet

It had taken a long time to get Scout to understand that what she and Noah did in the bedroom was entirely, completely under her control. She’d tried to get him to watch, once, just because she was sure it was self-evident that she could handle it. And he’d held up for the first little while, but it had been the wrong kind of fascination, like someone watching a car wreck. He’d just left, before either of them had even noticed he was having a bit of a breakdown. They’d both gone to find him, afterward, and he’d gone to sit on the porch, and been alone and sad and sorry that he couldn’t understand. It had taken a lot of kissing and cajoling to convince him that it was okay.

Sometimes she was pretty sure that even after _everything_ \--and there was more than she ever could have imagined--Scout would never actually trust her.

Pauling was not a shrinking violet. And she was getting tired of the fact that the boys assumed she was. True, she was scared of Pyro, when he was mad. Any sensible person would be scared of Pyro, when he was mad. Noah hadn’t ever hurt her, not without her explicit consent. But his fits of rage were a different thing, he could get really dangerous. There’d been times when he _could_ have hurt her, easily, but Scout hadn’t ever let him. It had taken Pauling a long time to notice, and she was fairly sure that Noah still hadn’t picked up on it, but when it was the three of them together, Scout tended to get between her and Noah. He just tended to hang in the middle of a space, always sure he would be ready, before anything could happen. Intercessory.

She didn’t trust Noah not to hurt her, not if he ever really lost control. She completely trusted that Scout wouldn’t let him, would always get in the middle of it. But despite his best efforts, Scout wasn’t always there. And Miss Pauling had been raised to face her fears.

So, since that first time in the barn, she’d always kept a syringe full of barbiturates on her. There was no point in taking an unnecessary risk. There was no predicting what would set Noah off, and unlike Scout, his rage wasn’t wearing away, and it wasn’t getting any better.

It always seemed to happen when things were nice. They’d finished a fantastic dinner. Scout had been a semi-decent cook when they’d first moved in, he was a hell of a decent cook now. He’d even gotten to the point of boasting about it, like he would have years ago. It was wonderful and refreshing to see him proud and cocky. And it _had_ been the best steak she’d ever had. They’d been doing the dishes. Pauling had been washing, Scout had been drying, Noah had been putting things away. It was a little early for it, but Miss Pauling had put on a Christmas album, and was humming quietly along with it.

They’d been through a lot, it was late in the year. Scout’s broken arm had caused enough fallout that the three of them had nearly fallen apart. Noah had nearly walked into a wildfire. But, things had been patched back up, and they were all the closer for it. That was the funny thing about broken bones, too. They knit back together stronger than before. For a while, at least.

But Noah knocked a glass full of draining cutlery over, sent it crashing to the floor, and made Pauling jump. He sighed and grumbled, bent down to clean it up.

Sometimes when Noah got mad, you couldn’t tell at first. Sometimes he was _already_ angry, and it had just been boiling away below a tranquil surface. So when she laughed and knelt down to help him, she wasn’t expecting the freckled white hand that shot out, shoved her, sent her sprawling onto her tailbone with an undignified squawk of shock and pain.

“I’ve fucking _got it,_ Pauling, fuck _off!_ ”

Scout never let her handle it. And she _could_ have handled it. Even if she was scared, even if it had escalated, and it hadn’t yet, Pauling was a quick draw with a syringe and she _always_ had a syringe of _something_ available. Lately it had been something meant for Noah. Scout always got in the way.

Noah had already been calming down. He’d never pushed her before, he’d frozen in almost the same moment that he’d touched her, the sight of her knocked on her ass had stopped him cold, his hand full of silverware. Processing.

It was a shocking thing for him to have done, and though they’d been together for almost two years, it was amazing that it was the first time he’d done it. It was almost certainly down to Scout that it hadn’t happened before. They’d all reacted a little slower than they should have. And _wrong_. Scout most of all, though. Noah couldn’t be blamed for what had happened next.

Scout hadn’t needed to grab him by the back of the collar, haul him out of the kitchen. Shove him and send him crashing to the floor in the dining room. Infuriated. Beyond angry, into a territory he never went anymore. Partially with Pyro, mostly with himself. Of course, Scout wasn’t afraid of Pyro, when he was mad.

This was the problem with the pair of them. They got tangled up trying to protect each other, and everyone around them. They were terrified of collateral damage, but they did more harm in trying to prevent it than they would’ve if they could just learn to trust her.

“You _fuck_ , what the _hell_ …” Scout was snarling now, towering over Pyro. Well, of course that would send him spiralling further into rage. Scout got mad too, sometimes. Not often. Scout was just as scary as Pyro was, when he thought he had to be.

Pauling was slow getting to her feet and _god damn_ did her tailbone ever hurt. “Guys, I’m okay,” she called, her voice a little shaken, but it was too late by then. Pauling wasn’t fatalistic, not in the least, but Noah was. Noah had said, a long time ago, in a fit of bleak, anxious depression, that the day was coming when he’d really, really hurt one or the other of them. He’d melodramatically made them promise that they would to take the appropriate action when he did.

He hadn’t specified what he thought that was. He was a frothing, howling animal now, lurching back to his feet, incoherently shouting.

None of them had ever known what he might do, either. Of course, Scout had always been able to handle him. But Scout usually went into it cold, calm, not angry. Not reckless, vengeful on Pauling’s behalf. And Noah liked to use his hands, his fists. He’d throw things, but he threw things _around_. Not _at_ people. Noah couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn, anyway. If he had something in hand, usually he threw it. Usually it wasn’t a kitchen knife.

Scout kept the knives in the kitchen wickedly sharp. Scout was used to avoiding clumsy punches, enraged swipes of Pyro’s fists. He wasn’t used to an extra five inches of glinting steel. They’d been a Christmas present, that first year, their first Christmas. Walnut handles, antique. Pauling and Noah had found them on one of their endless antiquing trips, in an old barn they’d gotten permission to pick over. Pauling had restored them herself, Noah had carved beautiful scrollwork into the handles.

Of _course_ Pyro finally got in a shot that connected with him, of _course_ it was with the knife in hand. Noah wasn’t _there_ anymore, and probably he didn’t even realize he still _had_ a knife in hand. Of course all Pauling had been able to do was watch, as Scout reeled back,cursing and clutching his side. She hadn’t expected him to, but he regained his balance, kicked Pyro in the chest and sent him crashing into the dining room table, with a crack of one one of the wooden chairs beneath him.

Miss Pauling had bought the house, way out in the middle of rich, dense, Oregon farmland, with woods and mountains and its denizens spread out and only distantly neighbourly. With its small towns with their dull as dishwater gossip. Her beautiful house, she’d fixed it up and she’d filled it with old, beautiful things. With art, with hope, with comfort, with love. With her poor broken boys.

But mostly she’d bought it so no one would fight over it. She was so, _so_ sick of fighting. Of _course_ she’d brought a pair of violent, damaged psychopaths home. Of course.

Of course.

Pauling butted in. Scout was on his knees, now, he seemed not to understand why there was blood gushing from his side, gashed open from his hip nearly up to his rib cage. Shallowly, Pauling thought, just at first glance. Scout wasn’t the imminent problem. Noah was bellowing, thrashing his way free of a broken dining room chair, and she pounced on him, expertly shooting him full of haloperidol. There. That was handled. She turned, grimaced. Scout.

 _Scout, oh Jesus._   _Don't yell at him._ _For fuck’s sake. You fucking idiot every goddamn thing Noah says about you is true, you are a fucking fool and a moron and goddamn you, damn you straight to hell you_ idiot. _Don’t yell at him, it won’t help, don’t yell, don’t yell don’t yell at him._

She dropped to her knees, pulled his hands away. Her gasp of breath hissed through her teeth. “Oh, Scout, sweetheart. Oh, honey. Oh you _fucking idiot_.” She grabbed at the dishtowel he still had over his shoulder, pressed it against his side and pushed his hands over it again.

That last one had slipped out by accident.

  



	81. gabe

**RED BASE, 1968**

Hardest part of getting ahold of an alienated brother, you’d think, would be figuring out where he was. How to contact him at all, even. That wasn’t the problem, though. Fights and all, Scout’s mother would never have cut off contact with one of her boys. Family’s family, she’d say, and she’d said it even after the last fight with Gabriel, the one where he’d taken a backpack of his things and left the house without another word to anyone.

No, that wasn’t the problem. Gabe was living out in Rhode Island now, in Providence, and last Scout had heard he was apprenticing under a tattoo artist, one of the ones that had been kicked out of Boston when the tattoo ban went into effect in ’66. Scout hadn’t seen him since he’d left, but some of his brothers had, and they said he was doing alright. Had a boyfriend, apparently, one of them had said, and then never brought it up again.

Scout had always kind of wondered, kind of wanted to meet Gabe’s boyfriend. Just to see what people living like that were like. Were they that much different from normal?

Anyway, Scout had his phone number, same as he did with the rest of his family. So getting ahold of him wasn’t the problem, assuming the number hadn’t changed. No, the problem was getting up the nerve to talk to him.

But the alternative was spending all his time thinking about Pyro, just literally nonstop thinking about him and about that first night he’d seen his face and, uh, all the other things that had happened. He’d never done a hookup before. Did Pyro only want it to be a hookup? He hadn’t taken the mask off again, though he’d come up to him on the field a few more times. Scout couldn’t decide if it was weird or not, but he tried to remember to slow down so Pyro could put him out when his clothes caught fire, now.

Scout didn’t think he wanted it to be a hookup. At the very least he wanted to get to know the guy he’d fucked and decide if he should regret it or not.

So he got Gabe’s number out of his bag, in the little book he kept things like that in. He went and found a payphone on the side of the road. He sat there about two hours, probably getting a sunburn because the tree by the telephone pole was not as shady as he’d thought, trying to make himself call. The only way he managed it, eventually, was to tell himself maybe Gabe wouldn’t be home.

Gabe was home. “H’lo?”

“Gabe! Uh. Hey, man, hey, how’s it goin’, s’Adam. Hi.”

Small talk happened. Hellos, how are yous. Gabe’s confusion was palpable, the guy had never been good at hiding his emotions. And then they came around to it. “So c’mon, I know you ain’t callin’ just to check up on me. What, you kill a guy?”

Well, he had, yesterday, twice, but they were fine now. “No, uh, I, I mean yeah. I mean I didn’t kill nobody but I’m callin’ ’cause, uh.”

Silence. Scout cleared his throat. Gabe waited. Gabe was patient.

“… there’s, uh, I met this … guy.”

The other end of the line was so quiet that at first Scout thought it had gone dead. Before he could repeat himself, though, he heard a long, tinny sigh. “ _That’s_ why you’re calling. Okay, I get it.”

“I, uh, I mean it’s okay? That I’m—Gabe I ain’t, I dunno what t’do here. I don’t got anyone to talk to.”

“What about Ryan?”

“Man I ain’t even seen Ryan in two years.”

“Meg?”

“I don’t even know where Meg _is_ now, an’ she wouldn’t wanna talk to me about it none anyway. C’mon, dude, you’re my _brother._ ”

Gabe exhaled. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, I mean I know why you’re comin’ to me an’ all. Okay. Sure. What’s his name?”

“Uh—” Shit. Shit. P, Pyro, what were P names he had no idea—“Peter.”

“Yeah?” Gabe said, softly amused. “That’s my boyfriend’s name. You want to tell me about him?”

“That’s, that’s kinda it. I don’t know a lot about him yet, I guess, um, kinda we got drunk an’ …” He made a helpless gesture with one hand, realized it was useless on the phone, and exhaled. “… yeah. I mean, an’ it ain’t even the … the queer thing, s’a lot of it just I ain’t never, y’know me I don’t with the hookups so much.”

“That’s because you’re an enormous bleeding heart.”

“Shut up!”

So Scout told him, or told him as much as he could. He didn’t have a lot to say, after all, just he barely knew Pyro yet. He was gorgeous. He was an artist, he was nice. Scout had a lot of gut feelings. “You have a hell of a crush,” Gabe told him.

“I don’t, what, no I don’t.”

“You have the biggest damn crush I ever seen outta you. Look, I know you, you get hurt real easy with this stuff. You start makin’ people up outta the like five things you know about them. You be careful, is what you gotta do, you go in breakneck like you always do, you get your heart broke at best. You got me?” Scout grunted. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I ain’t tellin’ you don’t. He sounds like a good guy.”

“He is!”

“I ain’t sayin’ he isn’t! Cripes. I think you got the right idea, I think you’re doin’ fine, ‘specially if you’re already okay with—y’know, the bein’ queer part.” He exhales. “I mean kinda I wish you weren’t. Just cuz it’s, it’s real hard, man. Ma know?”

“No.”

“Yeah, well, don’t blame you. I won’t tell nobody. Good luck, huh? Keep me posted.”

“Yeah. Yeah I will. Thanks, Gabe.”

“No problem. Give him a kiss for me.”

Scout told the phone to fuck off, but by then Gabe had already hung up.


	82. perfect

Adam had called, for the first time in nearly five years. Gabe had been all ready to give him shit about it, but quit two good-natured jeers in. His little brother had brushed him off, didn’t really laugh. Said he wanted a tattoo. Oh, Gabe said, well, sure, when?

“Is tomorrow good?”

“Mmm. For you, sure, I’ve got a big sleeve I’ve got to do for someone but I got Ronnie comin’ in after can look things over—”

“No, nah, I kinda—just I’d kinda like no one else to be there? Just you an’ me.”

Gabe leaned back in his chair, drummed his fingers on the desk. “It that big a deal to you?”

“I mean. Yeah. I can pay whatever, ain’t no object, I can give you double whatever you normally charge. Triple even.”

“The hell you can, you ain’t gotta—”

“No,” Adam said, “I can, really, an’ I will if you want.”

Tomorrow wasn’t good for that, but the day after was. Gabe had barely gotten into his shop, his little two-story building he’d bought three years ago for his practice and named _The Inkwell,_ because Peter told him it was too pretentious and frilly a name, when someone knocked at the door. The “OPEN” sign was unlit; the blinds were drawn. It could only be Adam. Gabe opened the door.

The man standing on his concrete front step was not Adam. He was tall and he gangled, and had the sort of gymnast’s body Gabe had only dreamed about. Scruffy hair, a cap. Eyes with old shadows beneath them. The person who was not Adam grinned. “Hey, Gabe.”

Gabe blinked. “Sorry, we’re closed today.”

“I know that, jackass, I’m the one made you close it, c’mon. You gonna let me in?”

“… _Adam_?”

“Uh, _yeah_ , idiot,” Adam said, grinning still, shifting his weight.

 

* * *

 

Adam had changed. Ten years, sure, everyone changed, but—hell. Gabe’s last memory of his youngest brother was a scrawny, lanky kid running his mouth as Gabe stormed past him on his way out the door, his hat too big for him, wearing threadbare hand-me-downs. The man sitting on the customer’s side of the desk wore the kind of clothes that intentionally looked less expensive than they were, until you noticed the stitching, the perfect cut to his figure. He had none of the nervous energy, the leg bouncing idly up and down notwithstanding. But he did still have the hand wraps. Gabe exhaled, glancing out his office’s window one more time before grabbing his sketch paper and pens and heading out to him. “So,” he started, “so, so Adam—”

“Oh, uh, sorry, not Adam.” Gabe paused, lifting an eyebrow. “Scout. Kinda, kinda nobody calls me Adam. Just Scout.”

“Oh. Sorry, then. Why Scout?”

He shrugged. “Long story. Real long story.”

“I got time.”

“I know, I know y’do.” He smiled–it was a tired smile. “Jus’ maybe not right now. Maybe later.”

“Well, alright,” Gabe said, rolling his shoulders. “You got here sooner than I figured. I got, uh, I got my partner here along with me, he comes in mornings with me sometimes. That okay? He can stay outta the way.”

“Shit, that’s fine, yeah. Hey, can I meet him? Peter, right?”

So Scout remembered. That was something. Gabe called Peter in, and he kind of always liked the look on people’s faces when they first met Peter: six foot six, built like a bull. He’d been a medic in Vietnam. He was missing an ear. When people asked Peter said he’d used it as bait to distract a crocodile. It was a much less interesting story than how he’d actually lost it.

Peter shook Scout’s hand and Scout didn’t so much as flinch, standing up to meet him and he shook it right back just as hard. Hell. Now Scout was grinning. “Damn, man, you oughta arm-wrestle my boyfriend. Maybe my boyfriend _an’_ my girlfriend, same arm. I think maybe you’d even win. You gonna stick around, man? I wanna hear about my shithead runaway brother.”

Well, that had answered at least one of the questions Gabe had been sitting on. It added several more, though.

 

* * *

 

Gabe had been prepared to do all the legwork, with regard to the half-sleeve Scout wanted. “A lotta black,” Scout said, ticking things off on his fingers. “All black, I’m thinkin‘. Kinda some abstract stuff, I dunno, kinda like henna stuff? Detailed-like? Less curly-cues an’ flowers, though.”

“Blackwork? Let me grab some of my photos, I love blackwork.”

“Oh, man, yeah, that’s it. Lotta black. Lookit those, wow. I brought some sketches an’ all, they got nothin’ on this.”

“Jesus, since when can you draw? You want a job?”

“Heh,” Scout said, his grin quieting a little, “I, nah, think I’m done with bloody stuff.”

A lot of black. Intricate, twisting patterns. Flames—“Not, like, stupid lookin’ ones, nice ones, s’real important, can y’make fire look like it’s alive? Shit, is that a stupid question?”—thin needles of black like syringe-points. Drops of blood. Rope, string, tangled into dozens and dozens of knots, curled into complicated designs.

It took four hours, just laying out the design, mirroring it onto Scout’s arm so he could see what it would be like. Gabe noticed the rows and rows of silver scars. Said nothing. Started, maybe, to understand why Scout was paying him three hundred dollars an hour for the exclusive use of the Inkwell.

When Scout got in front of the mirror, he went dead silent. Not unusual, but Gabe would have been lying if he’d said it didn’t make him nervous.

It lasted two minutes. Then Scout exhaled slowly, started grinning more slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, this … this is real damn good, man. This is somethin’ else.”

Gabe let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

 

* * *

 

They broke for lunch. Ordered pizza. Good damn pizza, not the greasy underbaked stuff from the parlor across the street. Delivery from that fancy place across town, three of them, topped to order. Scout insisted on paying. “Least I could do.”

“Okay, y’fuckin’ show-off, for real though, where’d all the damn money come from? You sent any’a that back home?”

“‘Course I fuckin’ did, the hell you think I am?”

“Alright but how, though, damn, I thought I was makin’ it good.”

Scout shrugged, crammed another bite of pizza in his mouth. Gabe paused as Peter touched him on the shoulder. “Hey, could you show me where the paper towels are?”

“Ain’t they in the closet?”

“I didn’t see them.”

Back they went, leaving Scout admiring the temporary ink on his arm. The closet had a dozen rolls of paper towels sitting directly at eye-level. “Peter, what the hell.”

“Shh,” Peter said. “Look. Your brother, out there, don’t force him to answer anything.”

“What?”

“Like the money. The scars, I saw them too.”

Gabe felt his expression twist into a frown. “I wasn’t damn well gonna ask why he’s obviously been fuckin’ cuttin’ himself. Kinda figured the point’a the damn tattoo was to hide ’em.”

“Well good. But they’re a symptom,” Peter said, glancing down the hall, keeping his voice to a hush. “Like my goddamn drinking was. I’m just saying, don’t force anything.”

“I ain’t fifteen, God, Petey.”

“No, but you’re a jackass,” Peter said warmly, tapping Gabe’s chin with two fingers, “and you don’t take goddamn hints.”

 

* * *

 

“All of it? Right now?”

Scout shrugged. “S’what I figured. Got the damn place to ourselves, I can’t stick around really.”

“What, your boyfriend an’ your girlfriend waitin’ for you?”

“Them, pfft, probably they’re fuckin’ in the truck cab,” Scout said, rolling his eyes.

Peter laughed, and Gabe bit back a smile. “Sure, sure. Just this is gonna take at least six hours.”

“I got all day.”

“It is gonna _hurt_ , man.”

Scout just looked at him. Shrugged.

Fucker didn’t even flinch when the needle hit him. Didn’t even take a painkiller. Bitched a little when Gabe got to his wristbones, but nothing else.

Time always seemed to go more slowly when he was tattooing. They talked, about Ma and their brothers and home. Scout told him about his people, Noah and Pauling. “He’s that one I called you about.”

“The hell he is, you said that guy’s name was Peter too.”

“Yeah, well, I lied.”

Gabe opened his mouth to argue. Caught Peter looking at him. Shut it again.

 

* * *

 

It took seven hours, because Gabe’s hands had started shaking near the end and he’d had to take a break. Scout looked paler, more tired. Grimmer; alive. About three hours in he’d quit talking, staring at the floor. He never grimaced or winced or complained. His face was completely blank. Even in the hour Gabe took to recover his hands, he didn’t say more than two or three words.

And then Gabe put in the last piece of shading, wiped the blood away, and said, “There.”

When Scout spoke it was like stones grinding against one another. “S’done?”

“It’s done, man.”

Scout blinked down at his arm, like he didn’t recognize it. Slowly, he pushed himself up off the chair, shaking the arm a little, and limped to the mirror. Limped. Gabe hadn’t even fucking noticed the limp.

He kept his mouth shut about it.

Scout was looking at the mirror. At his arm, twisting it over and under, making a fist, stretching out his fingers. Gabe wet his dried-out lips. “What d’you think?”

Scout didn’t answer, not right away. He turned sort of halfway from the mirror, hunching over the arm. Swiped at his eyes.

“It, uh,” he started. “Oh, God. Yeah. Just … yes.” A shaky breath. “It’s perfect. Thank you. It’s perfect.”


	83. show-off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> directly follows "perfect"

Gabe was a nosy bastard. And he ran his mouth, because _that_ ran in the family. Peter had needed to warn him away from doing a lot of foolish, overbearing things. Pestering his brother. Pushing him for answers to blunt questions. Calling their ma. Making Adam--Scout--feel guilty for not calling their ma. Demanding that he come back tomorrow evening, after they closed up shop, bring his pair of lovers, they'd go out for drinks. Peter would get a Shirley Temple. It would be like old times, except fruity.

Scout had agreed to that, and Peter had been able to tell it was mostly just to stop Gabe asking, but it hadn't really placated his older brother. Peter had taken Gabe aside, given him stern instructions in the supply closet. Because Gabe was a nosy bastard.

Gabe had been sullen all evening. The way he got after a particularly demanding piece of work. Gabe had an extra glass of wine with dinner. They were not small glasses. He finally snapped. Went off on a slightly boozy tirade.

"You know how it is. When you do a thing like that, when it's for some poor sonovabitch who _needs it_. Needs it like a drug, like it ain't ink goin' as much as poison comin' out. To the surface. Need to get all the poison onto the outside, as... As a fuckin' badge. Or jus' as proof it's real shit, shit that matters, ain't just imaginin' it, make it so's it's a fact. Or as a fucking warning. When you are the sorta motherfucker needs signs on your arms warnin' others to stay that length away. Fucking god. Mother of God."

Peter folded laundry and let him rant, because he was obviously far from finished.

"And also fuck you, Peter, that is my kid brother all dead-eyed and scarred to hell. Don't you tell me I can't know what happened to him. That kid was the sweetest boy in the world when I left home. He was always wrong for the kinda shit we got into, he never really liked the fighting. Did it because he thought he was supposed to." Gabe snarled. "Never called me a fag like he meant it. Only like he thought he was s'posed to. Ain’t ever meant it, I bet. Not like that one bastard fuck of a brother I got that I ain’t talk to no more. Not Adam."

“Gabby, you’re drunk,” Peter said gently, tucking a pair of socks into a ball and tossing them to his partner. Peter didn’t mind it when Gabe was drunk. Peter did not drink. But you could set your watch by Gabe’s tipping point, between ranty-drunk and weepy-drunk. At least he was almost done the laundry.

“You’d fuckin’...you’d be drunk too, if you felt the way I feel. My _baby brother_ , Pete. My sweet dumb damn baby brother, called me fuckin’...I don’t even remember, it was nearly a _decade_ ago. ‘Cause he fell in love with some dumb artist boy, an’  _Christ_ . You gotta know Adam, only he says he ain’t Adam no more. I don’t...Christ, what if it’s fuckin’...drugs or AIDS or some awful shit. All that kinda fuckin’ money, what’s he done to get it? What if...fuck, I can’t even imagine, an’ he wouldn’t say? How bad could it be that he wouldn’t say? He been holed up like some rentboy slave for some bastard rich fuck? Scars, hell, talk about the fucking _track marks_ . Where the fuck’s he _been_ ? Oh, god. Petey. Adam ‘cept he ain’t wanna be Adam anymore? My _brother_. I-I should’ve...I shoulda helped him. I-if I’d known to...”

A huge sniffle. There he went. “Gabe, angel. C’mere.”

You had to wait until Gabe got weepy, if you wanted to get a word in edgewise. Gabe was razor thin, strawberry-blonde like a field of wheat in a  summer-sunset. He rubbed ferociously at his eyes beneath his glasses. Gabe’s septum was pierced, and his left eyebrow, twice. A slender, stainless steel bar pierced his right ear in two places. The other had a carved piece of bone hanging from it. He was delicately, beautifully inked. Peter had done one of Gabe’s sleeves himself, they’d both been dizzily drunk and a little bit high and it had been three in the morning, and they agreed it was the best work either of them had ever seen. Peter liked to run his fingers over his favourite parts of Gabe’s vivid right arm, when Gabe was torn up about something. Gabe got torn up like a paper bag full of nails. You had to know that about Gabe.

They cuddled until Gabe was tiredly sniffling again, and Peter’s curly brown hair was in need of a wash. “You’re going to have to listen to me about your brother, Gabe. Because you need not to make this about _you_ , if you really care about _him_.”

“A’course I _fuckin’_...”

“Gabe, _settle_ . Listen to me. I know more about your brother than you do right now, because I know he’s just like I am. He’s been through things he can’t explain. He’s been through things he’s spent years trying to understand. He still doesn’t, but god bless him for getting this far. _It doesn’t matter what those things were_. You were looking at him, Gabe, you weren’t seeing him. He’s a bit torn up at the edges, but baby, he is a tough motherfucker. You say he used to be sweet like it’s a thing he’s not anymore. There’s a way you can tell...about guys like him, and guys like me. The things you want to ask your brother about aren’t the things he needs you to know. One thing I can promise you, though. If he's still standing after whatever he's been through, he's _got_ people who knew to help him. Gabe, honey. I think he's really okay.”

Well, Gabe had fallen asleep. When Gabe got drunk, he invariably cried himself to sleep. You could set your watch by that, too. Peter sighed and kissed him, unsure what his partner had heard, unsure what he’d remember. He _was_ sure that he was going to need to run interference between the pair of them. It wasn't like it would be the first time he’d kept Gabe from getting his teeth into one of his brothers. Only Adam--Scout--was the first one Peter had been really afraid of being able to bite right back. Adam may never have been a fighter, but Scout had the look of someone who'd killed people.

Peter had known and loved a lot of men who looked like that. He held Gabe closer, nuzzled his bearded cheek against his ruddy-blond hair.

\-----

Peter would not have know what to offer the tiny lady who came storming into the shop just before closing the next day. If she hadn’t had Scout trailing after her, he would have offered her a chair and the use of the phone and directions if she needed them. She was lovely and tiny and wore a dress of ivory lace. She had Scout by the arm, but it seemed less due to affection, and more just to illustrate a point.

She tugged him through the door, and he was grinning unabashedly, as she stopped in front of the counter and held his arm up, freshly bandaged. Peter was six and a half feet tall. The tiny lady barely topped five. He still took a step back from her demonic green eyes.

“Did you do this?” she demanded, pointing at the tattoo Peter knew to be hidden beneath the bandages. “Who did this?”

Peter had not, but he was afraid that denying it would sound like he was trying to dodge what sounded like it might be blame? Peter was really not terribly experienced with women.

Scout was just beaming, cheerfully talking over her. “Hi, Pete, this is my girl Pauling. She ain’t mad, or she ain’t mad at _you_ , anyway, she’s mad ‘cause she can’t parallel park an’ Noah had to do it for her, an’ it weren’t even that we made fun'a her, she’s just mad about how she can’t do it.”

“Scout, shut the fuck up. You are talking out of your ass, you don't have the first idea why I'm mad. And I’m not talking to _Noah,_ you spent twelve hours sitting on your ass in a tattoo parlor, and _Noah_ took me shopping.”

Scout shrugged, diffident. “Toldja I wanted to be let alone. You can handle Noah, you didn’t hafta go with him. An’ I said I was sorry.”

“He was moping. He missed you and he was moping and you know how he is unbearable. The only things that cheer him up are spending obscene amounts of money and telling me how I look terrible in the things I think are pretty.” She let go of his hand, looked Peter up and down critically. Peter had never been sized up by someone so little. “I want a tattoo,” she stated, clearly. She reached out, took Scout’s other hand, the one not swathed in antiseptic and bandages. This was different, now, she had interlaced her fingers with his, and everything about her softened when he squeezed her hand. She looked up at him, and then for a moment, she was lovely and sweet and a girl in love. “And I want _him_ to do it.”

Before Peter could work out how best to politely inform her that this was, in fact, illegal, there was a metallic chime from the bell over the door. He was grateful for the reprieve, and looked up to address the new customer. Usually they weren't this busy in the evenings. “Hey, we’re just about to close up,” he began, but stopped dead.

Scout had described Noah (albino but with freckles, curly blonde hair, ripped, actually kinda plain looking). Scout had deliberately not done him justice. Because Peter had seen some shit in his life, he’d seen beautiful boys cut in half by machine gunfire, he'd seen what it looked like when an untouched forest was swallowed by napalm, he’d seen the sunset after the fall of Saigon. Peter was a little bit jaded against horror, but you could stop Peter dead with beauty. He goggled, a bit, at Noah.

Scout had always enjoyed the look on people’s faces when they saw Noah. Noah had taken Pauling shopping, bought her a beautiful white dress. She wore her earrings, the ones she claimed had freshwater pearls hanging from them, despite the fact that they were obviously teeth. Her nails were lovely, delicate violet. Somewhere on her person was a syringe full of something that would kill you if you were lucky. Pauling was a darkling, sinister little vision. Never mind that she was tiny and demanding, she drew the eye enough to look at. Peter didn't really have strong opinions about the way women looked, unless he was inking pinups of them onto biceps, but she was a pretty, dainty thing.

 _Noah_ , though. When Noah stepped through a door, he was always conscious of the way he looked with the sunlight behind him, knew that his shirt was just a little bit too tight, knew that you could see the outline of his body through it. Knew he was pale like alabaster, knew he had freckles that looked like each had been deliberately placed to draw the eye. Knew about that one dark one on his lower lip, knew exactly where to bite his lip so it was obscured. Knew that his curly hair looked gorgeously, touchably soft, like spun white gold. Knew he had eyes that put a clear blue sky to shame, framed with a fringe of pale gold lashes. Knew how devastating it was when he smiled, with his even white teeth, like freshwater pearls. Smug bastard.

“Bit of a hole in the wall, isn’t it? Pauling, are you quite sure you want to do this? Hell.” He strode into the shop, closed the door behind him. He had two canvas sacks of groceries slung effortlessly over his broad shoulder. Idly he reached out, flicked the open sign off. “God, hello. Is this your place? Peter, I think it was. I’m assuming. You are _enormous_ and I mean that in the _worst_ way possible. Shame on me. You’re not my scrawny boyfriend’s brother? Gabriel? Where _is_ he, Pauling bet me he’s not cuter than Scout.”

Noah lowered the bags he’d brought to the ground. A cluster of parsley, a baguette, fresh, gorgeous tomatoes were nestled in the top of it. He sauntered over to Scout and wrapped two muscular arms around his waist, resting his bearded chin on Scout’s shoulder. Possessive. Scout’s grin only widened. “Scout said you all wanted to go out for drinks, but he also said you have an apartment upstairs? And he wants to cook us all dinner.” Noah smiled wickedly, kissed his boyfriend on the neck. Pulled a thick wad of cash from his pocket and displayed it coyly. “And I was hoping I might get something _pierced_.”

Gabriel was in the back, finishing up the day’s books. Peter was tempted to throw the three of them out, before things could get out of hand. Gabriel had been right about one thing. With Adam or Scout or whatever he wanted to be called. Whoever he was, he was definitely a fucking show-off.

But, if Peter was the sort of person who always made good decisions, he would still have both ears. So, grinning back at the three of them, he called over his shoulder, "Hey, Gabby? Hon, your brother's back. Brought some more business with him."


	84. dinner party

Scout could cook. Adam had not been able to cook. The last Gabe had known of Adam, he pretty much ran on whatever there was in the house that could be scraped onto bread and folded in half. Their mother had done her level best, and it was a miracle all eight of them had made it to adulthood, but usually they were lucky if this was something as good as peanut butter. Gabe had always been naturally skinny, but Adam had been almost perpetually underfed. Somewhere over the past ten years he’d filled out, grown into himself. Gabe followed him into the kitchen of the tiny apartment, watched him as he worked. They chatted. Pauling and Noah were being charmed by Peter, and vice versa, sat around the coffee table in the living room.

A bottle of wine had been opened for Noah and Gabe to work at, and a six-pack of cheap, terrible beer that Gabe ribbed his little brother about viciously. Scout had only grinned and lobbed one across the apartment to Pauling. Noah snatched it out of the air, squinted at the label disparagingly, but still handed it to her, gracious. Scout had cracked open his own and set it on top of the fridge where it would be half-remembered throughout the course of preparation, and then all-the-way-remembered and chugged before dinner was served. Pauling had only had half of hers, she handed that over as she sat next to him at the table. He'd laughed and affectionately called her a lightweight.

Gabe had a glass of wine, but he cut it generously with the sparkling water they’d brought along for Peter. It was astonishing, watching his little brother and his partners. He needed his wits about him. He refrained from comment and just watched as his brother got to work.

He had brought pasta, tomatoes so ripe the skins were about to split, and basil, which he bruised gently and tore by hand. He tossed the three in effortlessly estimated proportions, doused the whole pot with with olive oil. Salt and pepper. He made a gazpacho that Pauling wouldn’t touch, so spicy it brought tears to Gabe’s eyes. They’d brought bread, cheese, olives. Fresh, sweet fruit, more cheese. Chocolate. Good damn chocolate. Coffee, as it started to get dark. Adam would not have remembered that Peter was a teetotaler and a vegetarian. Scout had gone out of his way to accommodate him. Hadn’t even made a big deal of it. Noah had been the one who made the mean jokes.

Noah. Noah was...well. Noah took getting used to. Gabe’s jaw had clicked audibly shut, after recovering from the _sight_ of Noah. Noah had looked him up and down with a back alley grin, and pronounced, “Well, I’d fuck him, but I’d probably make him leave right after. Fifty bucks, Pauling? I think we oughta call it a draw, he’s _prettier_ than Scout.”

This had started a bizarre three-way fight between the trio, with shifting alliances and no clear victor. It had ended with Pauling twisting one of Noah’s nipples and badgering Scout to go upstairs and get started making dinner, because she was starving.

So, Noah could talk. He was equal parts cruelty and charm. Adam had never used to shut up. Apparently he had rubbed off on Noah in the act of becoming Scout, because Noah could _talk_ . Around the table, Noah more or less piloted the dinner party conversation, all suave, backhanded kindness and charming insinuations. He waxed poetic about the farmhouse where they’d lived in Oregon. Told stories about their time there, nice stories, happy stories. Gabe tried to watch Scout--tried to _see_ him, because even sleepy and drunk he had a better memory than Peter credited him for. And even some of the happiest of these stories made Scout’s face go blank, wooden. Pauling seemed to know when to reach over, take his fingers in her delicate hands, or lean in and murmur something softly in his ear.

And Pauling--she insisted on being called Pauling, wouldn’t be even gently teased into disclosing her first name--was just all dark intensity. She was quieter than the other two, more of a listener. She sipped her half-glass of bordeaux slowly, black-lashed eyes over the rims of her glasses watching the pair of them. She watched everyone, smiled slow and sweet. Laughed. Reached out and touched Peter’s arm affectionately when he complimented her, he sat on her other side. Passed things as they were asked for, seemed to have appointed herself the charge of the wine and beer.

Gabe found himself wishing Scout could just bring Pauling home, to their long-suffering, broken hearted mother. She had a certain unnameable quality that really reminded him of their Ma. Like she would do absolutely anything for her boys, but god help them if they crossed her. No Noah. Noah was great, even if he was kind of mean, but he was a complicating factor. Pauling he could have gotten away with, because for all that you could tell she was a little bit scary, she was also girlishly, winsomely devoted. She got up from the table, periodically, cleared away empty plates and dishes, offered more wine, slapped Noah playfully when he reached out to slip a hand up her dress. Pulled Scout’s hat off and ruffled her fingers through his hair. Kissed his temple, offered him another beer. He shook his head, but accepted a glass of water. No, nothing like Adam.

The group dissolved apart following the cheese course, and Gabe went to help Pauling with the dishes, because she insisted on washing them, but Gabe had _manners_ , so they compromised. Noah had sprawled out on the couch, whining about something inconsequential and Scout was trying to badger Peter into arm-wrestling. Peter was smiling broadly, politely and firmly refusing, he didn’t want to hurt either of them. That got Noah’s attention. Noah sat up.

“C’mon. S’just arm wrestlin’. Won’t hurt anyone. Y’all’ve got two arms, you beast, one for him an’ one for me. Scout’s not even _half_ so wimpy as he looks--”

Gabe watched his little brother bristle, just like he was thirteen years old again, being picked on by someone who could kick the shit out of him, easily. Playful, though, “Fuck _you_ , Noah, I will fightcha any day an’ I’ll _win_ . Halfway crippled, my shit all fucked up, you remember, on the worst day’a my life, you still couldn’t even friggin’ _touch_ me.”

Noah was just tipsy enough that you could hear the edges of his slight southern drawl trying to press through whatever he said. He reached over, lazily brushed his knuckles across Scout’s cheekbone. “Darling, ya’ll need to shut your lovely, stupid face, before I crush it shut for you.”

Peter was laughing so hard that they managed to get him to agree, and then it was just the three of them, Scout and Noah grinning and slightly buzzed, trying to budge either of Peter’s massive arms. Gabe and Pauling watched from the kitchen, cheered on their respective partners. Scout put up a hell of a fight, but eventually Peter pinned his wrist to the coffee table. Undaunted, he grinned wickedly and clasped his hand on top of Noah’s. Between the pair of them, they managed to wrestle Peter’s dark-haired arm into submission.

Pauling and Gabe resumed doing the dishes, chatting politely. By the time everything was rinsed, washed, rinsed again, dried, and neatly stacked away, she had convinced him of the existence of a loophole, a little legal backdoor that would permit Scout to do the tattoo that was the reason they’d shown up at the shop in the first place. Gabe looked across the room at his brother, the way he idly twined his hand through Noah’s flax coloured hair, listening to Peter’s war stories. He hadn’t known his little brother could draw. He’d offered his little brother a job, only half-joking, because that was just what you did for your brothers. Pauling was going to make him do it anyway, whatever he wanted.

He finally caught his brother's eye, answered the subtle raise of his eyebrow, “Oh, what the hell. Come on. I’ll show you the basics.”

\-----

Gabe had to be there. That was part of the legal tarantella they were dancing, because technically Scout was an apprentice. Scout had needed to pay him three hundred dollars, which he did, laughingly borrowing the cash from Noah. Gabe was not allowed to charge Pauling full price. Pauling had to sign a waiver. Pauling had arranged all this beforehand, and would look it over carefully afterward. Pauling was meticulously scary, Gabe realized.

Noah and Peter were chatting affably, in the little waiting room in the corner of the shop. They had brought down cups of dark, rich coffee, Noah had cut his with sugar, Peter had lightened his with sweet cream. They got on like a house on fire. Noah was curious about napalm, to the point that he was actually sensitive and diplomatic about asking about it. Scout had cautiously let it slip that Noah was a pyromaniac, and Peter was curious about pyromania. They were having a good, thoughtful conversation, the sort that only really ever happened between semi-strangers. Peter had offered him a tattoo of his own, something subtle, in white ink. Noah had declined, laughing, asked why he would ever want to mess with perfection. He had a body that would make any tattoo put on look like shit by comparison.

Distantly, Gabe heard their discussion turn explicitly to what he and his little brother had in common. He heard the phrase “lucky white spot” answered with “old aeroplane shaped birthmark”, and firmly tuned Peter and Noah out. He needed to concentrate anyway.

Gabe made his brother practice. Gabe had a fridge in the tattoo shop, and he took on apprentices from time to time. He had sides of pork belly for learning the basics, and Scout was a natural. He was disturbingly a natural, in how undisturbed he was by the needle and the ink and the way it just went into the flesh. Gabe remembered how he hadn’t flinched, not once, not at all. Gabe was probably about as intoxicated as Pauling, and he was nearly biting his tongue off to keep from blurting out the things he wanted to ask his brother. He looked across the room at Peter, talking quietly, deeply with Noah about their long ago wars and their mutual demons. Peter volunteered at the VA on weekends. Peter was breaking his own rules. But Gabe held his tongue.

Pauling was sitting in the chair now, her left arm bared. She looked tiny,especially in a chair that usually held bikers and truckers and Amazon type women, if it held women at all. Small enough that her half can of beer and a small glass of wine that she hadn't quite finished had made her just edge up on tipsiness, but she’d been drinking slowly and with food. Short of Peter, she was the soberest person there. Gabe realized she had been very, very deliberately controlling the amount of alcohol everyone got into. He chalked up another point in Pauling’s favour.

He wasn’t in charge. Not even remotely. Gabe was present in a legal sense only, because this seemed like it was a continuation of a moment between the two of them, something deeply intimate that had happened long, long ago. He felt uncomfortably voyeuristic. She had wanted a look at Scout’s new half-sleeve, so he had unbandaged the fresh ink, and now he held her hand, while she peered at every aspect of it. He hadn’t yet put on the rubber gloves that sanitation demanded. He had looked at them trepidatiously, but steeled himself when Gabe had firmly insisted.

“It’s going to hurt,” he told her softly, his own freshly inked skin black against her pale fingertips. “He did it to me, an' it hurt like hell, like the kinda hurt you gotta go away inside for. An' I’ll do it if you ask, an’ I know you’re fine with that kinda thing, but...darlin’, you gotta know how I hate it. I ain't never done it before. Might make a mistake. Kinda mistake that's permanent. You gotta ask me, 'cuz I won't do it otherwise. I can't.”

She stared back, even, unflinching. “This is something I just need you to find out about me. You know everything else. You need to know how I can hurt just as much as you do, and how that’s beautiful. I want that written on me forever, so it won’t wash off. I love you, Scout. Please, do this for me?”

Scout was quiet a long time, then nodded, kissed her fingertips, and went to work.

Gabe couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t say a word, because all he wanted to do was beg his brother to come work for him. It struck him as mournful that this was probably the only art he would ever put into the world, such that people would see it. Scout said he wasn’t an artist, and it killed Gabe, because his stupid, broken, mysterious little brother made art in a purer, more intimate way than he ever had. He barely knew Pauling, but he was watching her soul being etched onto her arm in black, ethereal lines and shadows. He watched his brother work quickly, unflinchingly, to spare her the pain of dragging it out with hesitation. He hadn’t planned any of it, it just emerged fully formed. A thorny rose thicket with death’s head moths and some deeply complex piece of geometry that Gabe had no hope of emulating or penetrating the meaning of, but was somehow required to witness.

And Pauling was just dead silent, wincing only slightly, the barest amount. Her eyes remained fixed on Scout, her lips parted occasionally, tiny gasps and moans of breath. Scout didn’t look up from what he was doing. They were off together, doing something no one else was a part of.

It was too much, and Gabe had to cross the room. He had to curl up next to Peter and just drown himself in their discussion. Gabe couldn’t bear to watch the impermanence of things he would never see repeated. He thought a long time about how he would never be able to see Pauling’s arm again, without thinking of all the things that had gotten lost somewhere, in the stranger who was supposed to be his brother.

 


	85. kukri

It was late. Early? One of those. Scout found himself blinking a lot, though he told himself it was just because of how long he’d spent bent over Pauling’s arm. “Ain’t quite so much what I was hopin’,” he’d apologized when he was done, four hours later. His hand was stiff and ached and he worried he would drop the gun. Gabe did this every day? God damn.

And Pauling had shushed him and wiped at her eyes. Once he’d laid the gun down and stripped off those awful gloves (white plastic, tinted red now with blood, he tried his best not to look at them), she’d grabbed his chin with her uninked arm and kissed him good and hard. Behind them, Scout heard Pyro wolf-whistle. He grinned against Pauling’s lips and leaned into her for a few seconds before pulling away. “That good?”

“It’s,” Pauling started, her hand still on his face as she looked at her arm. “Oh, gosh, Scout, I. Oh this’ll start really hurting soon, won’t it. It’s beautiful, Scout, I don’t …” She trailed off, pulling her hand away, pressing the back of it to her mouth. Scout laughed, low, kissed the top of her head. Noah sauntered up seconds later, taking Pauling’s hand to inspect his work.

Scout dragged himself back to the waiting area where his brother and his brother’s boyfriend had been sitting, and flung himself down on the closest open seat. “Dunno how you do that. Shit. Sorry I went an’ made you do it on _me_ that long yesterday.”

“I’ve gone longer,” Gabe said. “I think eight hours is my record. That was at a convention, though, and I couldn’t use my right hand for a week afterward.”

“What the hell, man.”

Gabe grinned at him, stood. Said something about going to wrap up Pauling’s arm, same as Scout’s had been. Scout just nodded, shut his eyes. Gabe had decorative weapons on the walls of his shop; Scout didn’t much feel like looking at them.

Over the next fifteen minutes he heard clean-up and the crinkle of plastic-wrap. Soft words. It was coming up on five in the morning, but Gabe talked Pyro and Pauling into coming down the street with him to a twenty-four-hour diner anyway. Pauling needed something to eat after that, he said, tattoos took it out of you, and this was no night for leftovers.

Scout was content to let them go, only a twinge of nervousness nipping at him as the three of them headed out the door. Half an hour, probably, they’d be back soon. It was fine.

It was just him and Peter, now, Gabe’s bear of a partner. As Scout half-dozed on the chairs, sprawled out like a cat, he was dimly aware of Peter getting up and crossing to the tattoo mess. Clattering as things were put away, the soft ripping sound of paper towels. Cleaning things up, he guessed. Sweet guy. Gabe had done pretty damn alright for himself.

Scout turned over and stretched and yawned, and the smell of antiseptic hit him like a fucking train.

His yawn stuttered off into a gasp as his heart began to thunder. He fell off the chairs, knocking one over in his reactionary kicking, and pushed himself up on shaking arms in time to see something huge coming toward him. _Heavy_ , he thought, and then, _Medic_ , and the antiseptic smell was stronger now and before he knew what he was doing he had shot upright and grabbed the chair that had fallen. “Whoa,” someone said, “what–”

They didn’t get to finish it before he threw the chair at them. The massive thing in front of him threw up its hands and flinched as the chair knocked against their arms, and that was all the time Scout needed to escape, he had to run he had to get a weapon he had to _hide._

He shot past them almost as if he had two working legs, and skidded only once as thoughts shot staccato through his brain, raw and electric. _Upstairs. Kitchen, knives, locking doors. No, wait, exits, second floor no exits except the windows, fuck_ , **_fuck_**. The heavy was between him and the door, he couldn’t beat a heavy one-on-one, he was going to die. He was going to die.

The heavy called his name and it distracted him for half a second, for too long. He snarled as it advanced again, eyes darting left and right for something, anything to defend himself with. The tattoo gun was out of reach, he’d corner himself if he went upstairs, he was going to die, and—

—and—

—Gabe had decorative weapons on the walls of his shop.

Scout leapt sideways, ripping down something that looked exactly like one of Sniper’s old kukris. He rounded on the heavy, lifting the thing in two shaking hands. “ _Fuck off!_ ”

“Scout,” said the heavy, in a voice that was not even remotely accented—smooth, calm, a fucking trick, _spy_ —“Scout. Listen. You’re having some kind of attack. This probably isn’t the first one, yeah?” He didn’t get any closer. (He was still between Scout and the door.) “Hey, man, try and listen to me, okay?”

“Fuck you I, I ain’t fallin’ for your shit, fuck you g, get outta my way I’ll cut your goddamn neck open—”

This went on, the painful back-and-forth. The guy wouldn’t fucking move, Scout’s head hurt, where was Pyro, Pyro was supposed to be here. Pauling was supposed to be here. His brother—Gabe had fucking set him up, this whole thing had been a trick…

The kukri was getting heavy to hold. Scout’s leg was hurting him, he’d ripped the plastic off his tattoo in his bid for escape. Things still smelled like antiseptic. Scout had started breathing through his mouth.

Finally the guy … Peter, that was his name, Peter, finally Peter set the chair Scout had thrown at him back upright, and sat down in it with folded arms. Scout watched him, still heaving huge ugly breaths, feeling what little composure he had beginning to give way to raw fear and desperation. He needed Pyro and Pauling, he was such a fucking wreck, God, so useless—

The Inkwell’s door chimed. The trio had returned, chattering lightly as they stepped inside. It all stopped dead when they laid eyes on Scout. Somewhere in the back of his mind, in the rationality that had been beaten back into a corner, he could only think of how fucking stupid this must look.

But now Pyro was here, Pauling was here, and the pair of them looked at him, and then each other. Pyro set off toward him immediately; Pauling took a moment to lightly touch Gabe’s arm before following.

Gabe was staring at him. Hahahaaa of course he was. Scout only returned his gaze for an instant before Pyro blocked his view. “Hey, slugger,” he said gently. He stopped in front of Scout, pulled a lighter out of his pocket. Flicked it on and ran it under his palm, just for a few seconds, just long enough to prove he was really Pyro. “It’s okay, you’re alright. Do you know where you are?”

Scout grimaced. Felt himself uncoil, a little. “… My brother’s.”

“Yeah. I think you kinda fucked up his decor, man. Can we put the kukri back?”

“I don’t—I can’t—”

Pauling, here, suddenly. She, too, held her hands up to show they were empty. “Scout? Sweetheart. Check your back right pocket. Remember?”

Uncomprehending, he stared at her. She repeated herself, her words knocking some of the static out of his head, and mutely—still holding the stupid blunt kukri—he checked the pocket. Found a little case, a tiny plastic thing, sealed with wax that smelled like sugar cookies. Melted off one of Pyro’s candles, he remembered now. Stamped in the center was a tiny, complex pattern of dots and lines—their farmhouse’s floor plans, in miniature, carved there by his own hand. Scout exhaled.

Things dropped down fast, from there. The pillbox held valium; the seal was to tell him it hadn’t been tampered with or replaced. He took the pill. They got the kukri out of his hands, the plastic pulled back up over his forearm. The smell of antiseptic was still in the air, and he couldn’t seem to mention it until Pyro realized it was there. At once he was escorted firmly out of the building, into the cool, fresh air.

The sun was coming up. It hadn’t been three minutes since they’d returned and Scout was already feeling better, mixed with a frustrated embarrassment that got worse every time he glanced back into the shop. When he could glimpse Gabe all he could see was the baffled, worried expression on his face as he and Pauling and Peter picked the store up. He sighed, hard. Got Pyro’s attention with it. “Doing okay?”

“Freaked out on my brother’s boyfriend and tried to pull a sword on him for half an hour.”

“Yeah, well. He’s had worse pulled on him, he told me earlier.”

“Gabe, though.”

Pyro caught Scout’s arm in his own, leaned his head against his shoulder. “I think Gabe’ll understand.”

Scout muttered something, but that was all. They watched the sun come up.

 


	86. break

Pauling turned at the chime of the doorbell again. Just Noah. She had been straightening papers on the counter at the front of the shop, just to calm her own nerves. She bit her lip when Noah leaned his elbows on the counter. Spoke up, before he could, “He’d been holding up really well, even with all the stress. The travelling. Do you know what set him off?”

“Antiseptic.”

“Oh Jesus. I didn’t even think of it. When Gabe was cleaning me up, or…?”

“No, I kinda checked on him before we left, just because he looked so worn out, and sometimes he gets edgy around blood, but he was all right. When Peter was disinfecting everything after, I think, was what did it.” Noah sighed, shook his head. "This one we maybe should have seen coming."

"He was okay on his own yesterday, blood and disinfectant and all," Pauling offered, gently. “I guess I didn’t assume this would be any different. We were all caught up in it, and I guess it was pretty intense, but he _did_ seem fine.”

Noah grimaced. "He had slept, yesterday. You know how he gets. Maybe we pushed it, staying past dinner. And then with you and your damn tattoo. I don’t… fuck, I guess I don’t mean I fault you for it, but it took more out of the both of you than I expected. I wouldn’t have expected you to catch onto the antiseptic, it’s a really particular thing. I should have been paying more attention." He went on, answered the question she wasn’t asking, "I mean, he's okay. He feels stupid, he's worried about Gabe, I don't think he even remembers he hit Peter. Wait another ten minutes if you think we should tell him, by then he won't care."

Pauling winced. "Well. Valium. There’s...I mean, it’s always a fairly hefty dose. There’s no point in risking anything lower, if it’s bad enough he needs to take something to get him back out of it."

Noah rubbed his hands through his curly hair, yawned. Brooded for a few moments, then groaned a bit theatrically. "Yeah, bad enough he’s got a big damn knife leveled at his brother’s partner. Poor bastard. Fuck me, Pauling. This could’ve been bad. Don’t tell him about Peter. Peter is tough, Peter is fine, we’ll leave it there. It’ll tear him up if he knows just how close he came to hurting somebody. Peter wouldn’t have hurt him back, I know that much for damn sure.”

“I don’t like to lie to him.”

Noah shrugged. “If he remembers, let him remember, if he asks, then you can tell him. But leave it, if you can. Ten milligrams of valium? And he hasn’t eaten in like six hours, hasn’t slept since yesterday. He’s got plenty to be broken up about already, and he’s gonna be knocked on his ass for the rest of the day, for sure. Tomorrow, too, I wouldn’t trust him driving. If it’s gonna weigh on your conscience, tell him now. You could probably hit him in the face with a brick right now and he wouldn’t even blink. I think we’re not going to be getting back on the road until tomorrow.”

Pauling was properly gnawing on her lower lip, now. “Mm. Another night at the hotel won’t kill us.”

That got a grin out of Noah. “The manager might, though. You know us. With our antics. It’s a good thing I tip housekeeping so well, or we would’ve been out on our asses that first night. After that thing with the caramel and the handcuffs? Those chambermaids are saints.”

Pauling rolled her eyes, but shared a tiny smile. “We’ll get them a fruit basket. Probably better if we were all rested up anyway. You’re right. Go back, let him lie down for a while, sleep it off. We can leave tomorrow. The day after, if we need to.” She dropped her voice. “And we should come back, so he can say goodbye properly. It wouldn’t mean much if he did it now, you’re right. I mean...I don’t want to push him. Gabe was...well. He dropped a lot of hints about how much their mother misses him, but it’s not our place to…”

“ _Hints_ ,” Noah echoed, laughed sarcastically. “Subtlety doesn’t run in that family, I don’t think.”

“Well, how would we know?” Pauling countered, shook her head. Took Noah's hand, stroked his fingers. “It’s still not our place.”

Noah’s smile twisted a little, ugly on his handsome features. “You don’t need to talk to me about trouble with family, Pauling.”

“Don’t make this about you. Bring the truck around, I’m going to see if I can get him to drink some water, maybe eat something.” She sniffed, exaggerated. “Ugh. I can’t tell if it still smells like antiseptic in here. I guess I got used to it, if it does.”

Noah shook his head wryly. “I left him sitting on the sidewalk staring at an ant hill. Probably he’d sit there for another hour. Believe me, he’s not going to care.”

\------

And he _didn’t_ care. Pauling had come out, said things that were kind, prodded and nudged him up off the ground, hugs and some kisses, back indoors. It smelled sharply, nauseatingly of some lemon scented cleaner, made his head hurt, possibly it had already hurt. He was tired and his leg ached, the way it did when he was tired. His left hand hurt, cramped and stiff. Still? Yeah. His right forearm was stinging beneath a wrap of plastic. Ow. Rough night. Morning.

And he knew why, he remembered why, but it was like the line that was supposed to connect the what and the why had been severed. He was aware of the break, knew where the line was supposed to join up, but not particularly bothered about the loss of the connection. The line was the part of him that cared. God, Gabe had done a good job on his arm, though. He could see it beneath the plastic, but it was all blurred by the way it overlapped. He pulled at it, until Miss Pauling scolded him, made him stop. Sorry.

Miss Pauling gave him a glass of water and he just held it in his hands for what felt like a long time, before she gently reminded him to drink it. Then it was gone and she took it away, traded him for another kiss on his forehead. Asked if he felt like he could eat something. He shook his head because he didn’t really know. No. No, nothin’, thanks. Did I miss breakfast? Who made breakfast? Are we gonna go home?

No, not home. Not until tomorrow, and also he was apparently her darling. Kisses. Back to the hotel, get some sleep. Seemed silly, he could sleep here. That was the best idea anyone had had all day. He could sleep in the truck, it wasn’t that bad. Or just here. Here was fine, he’d been sleeping here before, when it was dark. Trying to, anyway. And then the goddamn Heavy. Fuckin’ Medic. Ruined everything. Somewhere along the line he’d seen the sunrise, hell of a sunrise, get Pyro inside, gonna be a scorcher. C’mon, Miss Pauling. Maybe he hadn’t said all of that out loud. And where was Pyro?

Oh, there went the bell on the door and there he was. And now there was a _fight_ , because the truck had been towed. Haha, oops. Not a bad fight, not a scary fight. Not one of the ones he had to get in the middle of like that one in the barn and that one on the porch and that one in the dining room, and the kitchen, the bedroom, the woodshed with the axe, the truck on the highway, and also in the woods one time and then once while they were picking up lumber, but anyway, thank God. Pyro would kick the shit out of him. That’d be embarrassing, in front of Gabe and all. And Peter. Peter, though, Peter knew about how Noah was real strong. Scout knew about how to handle Noah, if he felt like it, so that’d be impressive. Noah was short and he was thick, and god _damn_ could he get mad, but he was a goddamn klutz, and Scout _usually_ kicked his ass.

Not now, though. Now he was just going to lie down and the hell with it all. Stupid to sleep in the hotel, or the truck. Here was fine. God, when’d he gotten so tired? Someone was touching his shoulder, and it took him an oddly long time to realize that it couldn’t be Noah or Pauling, because they were having a hissing, whispered argument about who was going to get a cab and go get a couch. Not a couch. The truck. Who said couch? They were going to miss checkout, back at the hotel.

Oh, hey, Pete, hey man. Hi. How’s Gabe? Are you guys gonna open up soon? Can I watch some stuff? I signed something. Fuck, Gabe didn’t gimme a job did he? We gotta go home. Except, just, “Peter? Pete. Betcha Gabe calls you Petey.”

Peter nodded. “Yeah, you’d be right about that. C’mon, man. There’s a couch in Gabe’s office. Quieter. Out of the way. Noah and Pauling are going to go sort things out, you can crash. It’s fine.”

Man, Peter was really all right. Damn nice guy. Did he tell him? Should tell him. Tell Gabe. Wow, nice office. Gabe’s office. No Gabe. It was dark in Gabe’s office. It didn’t smell like lemons. The couch was dark leather and deep and cool. Massive fuckin’ thing, made him feel small and young again. It was really dark in Gabe’s office, and then eventually Gabe’s office wasn’t there anymore, but that was okay because Scout wasn’t either.

 


	87. pancakes

Well, there was Adam.

Snoring lightly, sprawled out on his stomach, on the couch in Gabe’s office. Still with the hat, though Noah had tugged his shoes off, cradled his jaw in a freckled palm and kissed him, before he left. Gabe had commiserated, sympathized with Noah and Pauling and their towed-away-truck, this damn neighbourhood, he should’ve warned them. He called them a cab from a company he was familiar with, sent them off on their odyssey. Said he and Peter would keep an eye on Scout. Pauling had thanked them, with a bit of a sad smile, said that she could promise he wouldn’t be any further trouble. Just let him sleep. She’d written a note, explained where she and Noah had gone, in neat, swooping cursive. Then she’d kissed the corner of it, a rosy smudge of lipstick, and tucked it in Scout’s hand.

They were good people. They had left the shop hand in hand, in spite of their vicious bickering. Gabe liked Pauling, Gabe liked Noah. They looked great together, too, her all dark and him all golden. Gabe hadn’t asked, but Noah’s mother probably wouldn’t have objected to having a girl like Pauling brought home to meet the family. Scout was probably a non-option, given the southern drawl that had trickled out of Noah last night.

Gabe had rescheduled the handful of appointments he’d had for the day. He had a good reputation, a good customer base. They all understood. Family in town, family business. You know how it is, with family. Gotta make time for your family. Gabe had some paperwork to do anyway, he’d been meaning to sort out his office.

That had taken him all of an hour, even doing it quietly. He’d made his calls, cancelled the day’s appointments, had them all shuffled around and squared away long before it was even time to open. Given his employees the day off. Half-pay, take it easy, you bastards have earned it. It was worth it, whatever he was losing, not to have to deal with anything else today. He was tired, and getting tireder. Peter had stuck his head in a couple times, just to check on the pair of them. To pass on updates from Pauling and Noah, and their adventures in the bureaucracy of the local impound lot.

He'd gone upstairs to talk to Peter. He and Peter had had a fight of their own about the fact that Scout had gone off, thrown a chair at Peter. Why wasn't Peter taking this seriously? Scout had been a snarling, frantic terror, had pulled a dull, decorative knife from their long ago trip to Australia off the wall, and threatened to kill Peter with it. Gabe had not been the one on Scout’s side. Gabe was squarely advocating for Adam, and where had he gone and what the hell, his _brother_ never would have done anything like that, who the hell was this guy. How had this happened.

Peter had just told him to keep his voice down, that Gabe didn’t understand. Their speaking terms were terse, curt now. And Gabe was just sitting in his office, watching his brother. Waiting for him to wake up and stop being his brother any longer. Gabe loved Adam, Adam was the baby of the family, all awkwardness and chatter and good-natured humor. Lost, somewhere in the wind, absent Adam. Scout had taken his place, and Gabe wasn’t sure he liked Scout.

Gabe wasn’t the scholar in human behaviour. That was Peter. Peter was the people watcher. Peter was the who’d told him not to prod at Scout-- _Adam_ , fuck it, fuck Scout. _Adam_ was Gabe’s brother. Fuck Peter, also. Peter didn’t have brothers, he didn’t know. Gabe was kind of oblivious, sometimes, but now he could see the absence of everything Peter had been seeing.

Scout had precise, exquisite control over the amount of space he took up, knew where all his limbs were at all times. Moved deliberately, with restraint. He didn’t just exist in a space, he occupied it. Carefully. Scout squared his shoulders, sent his grey-blue eyes roving around the room periodically, had a rising, falling rhythm of tensing and relaxing in response to sensations Gabe couldn’t even perceive. Scout was wary, took everything in, constantly reading and rereading the room. Gabe hadn’t noticed this, until early that morning, when his brother had settled seriously into the whining hum of the tattoo gun, and it had stopped. He’d noticed the absence of Scout’s near constant, nervous surveillance. He covered it well. But the lack of it was jarring.

Because a lot of it was just body language, and it had all quieted now. And Adam, Adam, oh Adam you poor dumb fuck. Where’ve you been? Adam had a face that was just neutral, lower lip dropped open so his breathing remained slow, even. Guileless, not distant and blank, with that artfully crafted grin. Adam had sprawled out on his couch, clinging to a pillow to bury his head in, like he didn’t care about where the rest of him was, like he could just be and not be aware of himself all the time.

Shortly after Gabe had put his office in order, the air conditioner had kicked on. It was a good air conditioner, there was nothing appealing about tattooing anyone in a sweatshop. But the room cooled quickly, and Adam curled in on himself, shivering. Gabe had gone upstairs and fetched a blanket, quietly crept back in and just stared at the person on his couch. Idly tugged his brother’s hat off his head, tossed it on the arm of the couch. Dropped the blanket over him, tugged it up over his shoulders. Felt profoundly, achingly sorry. It wasn’t quite like all ten years had melted off of him, but he looked younger, less worn. God, and he made Gabe feel _old_.

It was another hour, and Gabe had been sitting at his desk with a sketch pad in his lap, bitterly trying to pin down at least some aspect of Adam, something to remember him by. Then a twitch, a shuffle, a yawn. Adam mumbled something, rolled over onto his back. Seemed for a moment like he’d drop back to sleep, then snagged on something. Yawned again. A long, lazy stretch. A sigh. Gabe didn’t say anything, watched his brother stare up at the ceiling fan. Adam lifted his arm eventually, tugged the plastic that covered his tattoo off, then stared at it a while. Gabe spoke up before he could prod at it.

“Don’t play with it, it’s healing. Probably should be washed and rebandaged. If you wanna get up, I’ll do it for you.”

Still Adam, when he pushed himself up, shifted and stretched again. “Mmm. ‘kay. Stings, though. S’posed to, I guess.” He rubbed at his eyes, pushed a hand through his dusty brown hair. “Where’s my...oh, there. Hat. Didja take my shoes? Gimme back my shoes.” He seemed to notice the note in his hand, unfolded it. Read it once. A second time. Gabe watched him rub his thumb over the lip-print in the corner. Watched his shoulders drop, saw him fumble in his pocket, pull out the pill case. Emptied, seal broken. “Shit,” under his breath. “Aw god. Oh, damn. _Damn_ it.”

There was a flicker of his eyes upward, meeting Gabe’s gaze across the room. All the anguish Scout kept hidden otherwise--by his strict composure, by his lazy, occasionally faltering grin--just for a moment it flashed through Gabe. Hit him right in his core, made him sit up straight in his chair, leaning forward towards his brother. Then Adam just dropped his face into his hands, exhaled slowly. “I’m really sorry, Gabe.”

“...well, hey--” Gabe started, but was interrupted.

“Whatever it was. I...fuck, Gabe. ’m so sorry. Thought I was just hungover, tired, maybe. I...I don’t remember. I ain’t sure... _shit_ . Miss Pauling. I hurt...I didn’t _want_ to hurt...no. Not Miss Pauling. I didn’t do anythin’ to Pauling. She’d have dropped me like a rock. But...something...Peter. Something with Peter, oh _god_ . Shit. D-did I...” He looked at the note again, squinted at her handwriting. “She _says_ I didn’t...but...I thought I--goddamn _fucking_ drugs. I get...s’just how I get so mixed up.”

“You didn’t hurt anyone,” Gabe answered, aware he was lying for the sake of Scout’s conscience. He’d been yelling at Peter about the bruises on his arms, not an hour ago. He had the distinct sensation he was going about this all wrong. “Hey, it’s all right. Okay? I ain’t mad or anything, so don’t worry about it. No harm done. C’mon, though. Y’hungry? I’m starving.” He lied again, he’d eaten an omelette at the diner on the corner only two hours ago, and Gabe ran on astonishingly little food, but--”Hey, Adam, man. C’mon, don’t beat yourself up about it. Let’s go. Pancakes, on me.”

* * *

 

The diner was only a five minute walk, but they dawdled. Adam walked along the edge of the curb, balancing right on the edge of it, stepping carefully over the cracks. The limp Gabe hadn’t noticed at first but couldn’t stop noticing now didn’t seem as bad this morning. And Adam had always been _terrible_ for dawdling, meandering his way through the world by circuitous, inexplicable routes, if he got where he was supposed to be going at all, it was usually at least an hour later than he was supposed to have been there.

Gabe smiled to himself, remembering the way their ma had used to holler at her youngest, and the way Adam would just flash his dumb bucktoothed smile in response, and say he couldn’t help it. He was still a little bit out of it, a bit out of sync with the world. Relaxed, Gabe realized, then made himself sad when he remembered that it took a mild-tranquilizer to make him that way. Scout had to be drugged and crammed in a corner somewhere, if you wanted to get at Adam.

And they slid into the booth at the diner, and now he chattered. Still a little loopy, he laughed at things that really weren’t as funny as he thought. Still liked pancakes, though. And eggs and bacon and stacking all the little cups of cream into an improbably tall tower. Drank too much coffee, that hadn’t changed, only now he took it black. His mood improved as he got his blood sugar up, laughed and grinned in a way that reached his eyes. DIdn’t look up at the door every couple minutes. Pulled the plastic off his tattoo again, proudly showed it off to the waitress. Ordered an entire lemon meringue pie, demanded that Gabe split it with him. Gabe tried to avoid carbs, as a general rule, but Adam could be infectiously cheerful.

Except over a towering forkful of meringue, Gabe blurted, “Ma’s gonna wanna know I saw you.”

Fuck, and he’d ruined it. Valium or not, apparently there were things that would snap Scout back into being. That hunted look came back, his shoulders stiffened. Everything about him was suddenly confrontational. “Well, then it’s just a shame about how you ain’t gonna tell her, ain’t it?”

“ _Adam_ . It’s...fuck, man, it’s _Ma_ . She thinks you’re dead. I didn’t wanna say, yesterday. Just fillin’ you in on what’s been goin’ on at home, that was nice. Didn’t seem like you minded. But...Adam, man, you gotta go home. You got family you ain’t even _met_ yet, nieces an’ nephews. Davey had _triplets_ , an’ they are a fuckin’ trip, lemme tell you. But Ma, though. You’re breakin’ her heart. I can’t...I'm not gonna lie to her about you. I gotta tell her.”

And the blank eyes, the wooden expression, the way his hands had clenched and then dropped into his lap, out of sight. “Ain’t like I can stop you. But I ain’t told you where we live, an’ I ain’t gonna. Not Pauling or Noah, either. Oregon’s a big state.”

Gabe chewed his lower lip. “She has your old address. She sends a letter every…”

“They get forwarded. I get ‘em.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t care how she feels.”

“I get ‘em, I ain’t read ‘em.”

“ _Adam_. What the fuck’s gotten into you--what thehell happened made you like this? We’re your goddamn family, man, that used to mean more to you than anything.”

Gabe had his father’s eyes. Adam had their mother’s. Scout had a two chips of dirty grey-blue ice, and all the laughter had gone out of them. “Thought you were lettin’ me alone. Thought Peter told you to back off, lay offa me.”

“How’d you…” Gabe stopped. “Did Peter say…?”

Scout was back, between sleep and food and caffeine, had clawed his way up through the valium-haze. Now he’d slouched in the booth, arms folded protectively across his chest, defensive. “Fuck, Gabe. No. You wanna know what I know ‘bout your boy, Peter? Peter has nightmares. Peter checks all the doors an’ windows t’your place, probably a couple times a night. Peter don’t go anywhere that he can’t sit with his back up against a wall, where he c’n see the door. The...fuck. Thing I grabbed offa the wall an’ was gonna put through him? Blunted, an’ heavy as shit, I woulda been lucky to get a good hit on him. He wasn’t scareda me. Betcha anything, though, one of the knives you got stuck to your walls is sharp. Betcha he knows which one, betcha he’s gotta gun somewhere in your place, too, somewhere he ain’t told you about. Betcha he’d have dropped me in one, if I’d grabbed anything I could have hurt anyone with. I’m the guy pulled a knife on your boyfriend, but Peter coulda been the guy killed your baby brother.”

Gabe gaped at him. They’d talked about the gun, the one Peter had. Vintage, he said. Just a collector’s piece, he’d known a lieutenant who had one. Peter had respected the man, he’d admired it. Kept it cleaned and loaded in the bedroom, though. “Peter’s gun is…” he began, lamely.

Scout laughed, a short, ugly bark. “You ain’t ever known a goddamn thing about guns, Gabe. You were always a big fuckin’ pussy about that shit, worse’n I ever was.”

Adam was long gone, now. “What the hell did Peter _say_ ?” Gabe paused, swallowed. “Peter was in a _war_. He was a medic. You weren’t...you were too young for...”

Scout’s eyes were hard, empty, but Gabe had said something that made him flinch. He swallowed, clenched his jaw. His voice dropped further, low and dark. “There’s wars all over the place. Peter ain’t had to say anything. Peter don’t drink, ‘cuz Peter just about drank himself t’death, didn’t he? Peter used to get drunk enough he scared the _shit_ outta you. Peter just used to be drunk _all the fuckin’ time_ , ‘cuz he couldn’t handle the inside of his own goddamn skull. Am I right?” Scout didn’t let him answer. He was angry, but he hadn’t raised his voice. His tone had darkened, but was still tightly, narrowly controlled. “Yeah, I’m fuckin’ right. Ain’t any of my business, though, is it? What the hell’s got _you_ thinkin’ that _my_ damage is any’a yours?”

“We’re family,” Gabe protested hollowly, retreating from his brother’s cold, measured fury. “You came to me.”

“Yeah. I came t’you because you know about _leavin’_ . You know about stayin’ the hell away for everybody else’s sake. _Family_ . You wanna talk about Ma, let’s talk about Ma. Let’s talk about goin’ home, sittin’ in the kitchen, cup of coffee with Ma. Let’s talk about what happens if a car backfires, or some dumbass kids got some firecrackers in the back alley, like we used to. Something goes off in the back of my head--somethin’ I can’t see comin’, because y’know, goin’ on four years of bein’ made _like this_ , I still I never fuckin’ do. Kinda the goddamn problem. Ma still have that dumbass green table in the kitchen? Metal legs, chips in the enamel? Weighs a fuckin’ ton. Betcha I could flip it over on _her_ , go tearin’ right the hell out the house. Cops’d have to find me, an’ you _know_ I can make myself fuckin’ scarce as hell if I gotta. Betcha I wouldn’t even notice if I hurt her. Doesn’t have to be Ma, either. Nieces, nephews, dumb fuckin’ kids ain’t got the sense to gimme room when I get freaked out, you think I could keep myself from really hurtin’ some stupid fuckin’ kid? One of my _brother’s_ kids? I ain’t got that kinda faith in me, an’ after what I just did, _you’d_ be stupid if you do.”

Gabe was just staring now, his hands around the latest and most unwise cup of coffee, just for something to hold onto, stare into. “...I...I’m sorry. Adam. I’m sorry, look, I know I don’t understand. But…”

Scout’s teeth clenched, flashed at him in a snarl. “Gabe, y’don’t get to say ‘but’ at the end of that sentence. _You don’t understand_ . It fuckin’ ends there. Don’t you dare tell me I don’t fuckin’ care about our Ma. _You_ left, an’ I was still there, and I _know_ how she got. I know I’m fuckin’ killin’ her, man, don’t...fuckin’...I don’t need to get told that. Providence ain’t what, more than an hour away from home? D’you think I can’t feel it, you think it ain’t like havin’ a hundred little hooks snagged into me, tryin’ to pull me onto a bus and just go _home_ ? I _can’t_ . Gabe, you spent all yesterday and the day before lookin’ at me like you ain’t sure you like me anymore, and y’know what, I think a little bit you don’t. That’s fine. Ma ever looked at you like that? Even with all your bullshit, was Ma ever _scared_ of you? Imagine how that’d be just about the worst thing in the world.”

There wasn’t anything Gabe could say. He didn’t understand. The fire seemed to have gone out of Scout, like he’d spent everything he had on that flare of anger and didn’t have anything left. He sagged now, instead of slouching, and rubbed viciously at his eyes. “ _God_ . And I am just sat on my ass in some stupid diner in fuckin’ Rhode Island, an’ I am all fucked up on valium an’ I dunno where my people are, ‘cept I know they get by just fine without me an’ all my shit, so it ain’t like it matters. An’ I hurt and I’m _tired_ and I’m just so fucking sorry. Gabe, chrissakes, why you gotta try an’ get at me? I hate to be like this, why you gotta keep reminding me how I wasn’t always?”

“I’m sorry,” Gabe said, as honestly as he could. “Adam, I didn’t mean...j-just...I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I bet you are. So’m I.” He got up, abruptly. “I gotta get outta here,” he muttered, and heaved a sigh. “Gabe. Man, listen, I...ahh. Shit. I only look okay on the outside. Same as Peter. I can’t go home. I wish I could, it ain’t me bein’ selfish. It’s only kinda me bein’ a coward, ‘cuz I _am_ , but mostly it ain’t that. It’s that there’s reasons. You’ve seen one of ‘em. There’s more.”

Gabe shrugged, woodenly. “There ain’t anything I can say about that.”

His brother mirrored him, lifting his shoulders helplessly. “I don't need you t'say anything. You're the one wants to talk about it, I really just don't. Just...I dunno, man. It's fuckin' complicated.” There was a long, awkward silence. Then Scout glanced up, towards the door. “Bus stop nearby?”

“...yeah, ‘round the corner.”

Scout absently tugged a couple hundred dollar bills out of his pocket, dropped them on the table. “Tip accordingly,” he joked, dryly.

“Fuckin’ show off.”

“Make the waitress’ day, she was nice.” He grinned, held his right hand out, . “Liked my ink. I do, too. Thanks for that.”

Gabe smiled back, a little wearily. “Seemed like you needed it.” Hesitantly he got up, shook his brother's hand. It was the first time Gabe had realized, the way the vivid tattoos up his own arm mirrored his little brother's. "It's not that I don't like you. Just that I don't understand, and it breaks me up, because I thought I did. I used to. You and me, we had a lot in common."

Scout grinned, crooked and wry. "Still do." He held up his arm, darkness from wrist to elbow. "Ain't another member of the family woulda trusted you enough to do this. Ain't anyone else I could've asked. Still counts for somethin', Gabe, an' thank you. Was good to see you again. Say g'bye to Peter for me."

"Yeah, I will. Tell Noah and Pauling it was good to meet them. I'm...well. I'm glad you got another family."

“Yeah,” Scout said, “I … yeah. Ain’t another. Just more,” he offered, his grin softening. “Ain’t nothin’ can replace you or Ma or any of us, y’know?”

Gabe knew, or thought he did, at least. And he and Scout lingered a moment longer, hating the way the unspoken goodbye hung in the air between them, hating all the things that couldn’t be said, for time or for pain. To Gabe those few seconds felt long and stretched-out, exaggerated, and there was nothing he could find to say.

But then Scout squeezed his hand and nodded, and before Gabe could see it coming he’d been pulled into a fierce sort of hug. It didn’t last long, only a second or two, and then Scout pulled away with a sigh and a smile. “Alright,” he said, “alright, you jackass, I’m leavin’ before the waterworks start.”

“Yeah. See you later.”

“I—yeah, I hope so too.”

And that was all. It was Scout who turned and left him behind, but just before he stepped out the door Gabe would have sworn that the man that looked back over his shoulder at him had their mother’s eyes.


	88. northeast

**BOSTON, 1968**

* * *

 

He was bleeding from his fingertips, still, from scrabbling up the bricks, and he hadn’t eaten more than half a stale sandwich in about twelve hours and the water was down to a thin layer of condensation on the inside of his bottle.

But the police hadn’t found him. Yet. Adam shivered and blew on his hands, tightened his scarf around his neck, and peered out the tiny, dingy window out to the street. January was a bad fucking time to have to go into hiding.

He’d holed up in the loft of a condemned restaurant. The stairs had busted on his way up and he wasn’t sure, exactly, how he planned to get down again. Probably he should do it before he started shaking from hunger, though.

Fuck, this was a terrible idea. This had all been a terrible idea, it was Gabe’s fault. Gabe had to go and be in the wrong neighborhood, trying to hunt down leads that might get him into a tattooing apprenticeship. Shady-ass place to be looking, in Adam’s opinion, but he was the only one who said yes when Gabe asked him. And Gabe had to go and look queer or whatever in that wrong part of the neighborhood, with his pierced ears and whatever the fuck, Adam didn’t know. Point was some assholes had picked a fight, three on two. Two Cassidys was about the same as four regular guys, though, and even Gabe knew enough to take out his piercings before the fight really started.

But it had been snowy and slick and the alleyway was coated in ice, and Adam misjudged the way the ugly blond guy would fall when he swung into his side with the bat. Certainly he wasn’t supposed to have cracked his head open on the cement step behind him. It was kind of amazing how quickly blood could evaporate snow.

Dimly he could remember the swearing and the stares and one of the guys shaking the one who had fallen, to no avail. Gabe had realized it first. “Oh, Christ,” he’d mumbled, pulling Adam back by his shirt. “Oh, _fucking_ hell.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t meanta, he weren’t s—”

“Shut up, we’re _leavin’_ ,” Gabe snapped, hauling him out of the alley. Between them it was easy to outrun the third one that gave chase. Adam liked running. Running made thinking about the fact he was pretty sure he’d just killed a guy harder.

Not that Gabe made it any easier when he jerked him into another side-street, under a broken neon sign for a pizza place. “Shit. _Shit_ , man, okay, let me think—”

“—think, think about fuckin’ what, I, dammit, he wasn’t—was he dead? He wasn’t dead, no way, I don’t, I. _Gabe_. You _know_ me, I ain’t a killer—”

“Of course you fuckin’ ain’t,” Gabe snapped, “I saw what you was doin‘, you weren’t goin’ for beatin’ his damn stupid head in or nothin’ but Adam, man, listen, _they are not gonna care._ ”

Nervously, they had gone home. The next day, in the middle of dinner, the doorbell rang. Two men in uniform on the front stoop. Gabe helped Adam climb out the window while their mother spoke to them in increasingly concerned tones, and threw a backpack stuffed with food after him. “ _Hide_ ,” he’d hissed, “go t’one’a our graffiti spots. I’ll come find you when it’s safe.”

And that was how Adam found himself huddled in the frigid brick loft of the same pizza place with the broken neon sign, three days later. How long was he supposed to hide? He’d get fucking hypothermia. Prison wouldn’t seem so bad next to losing a hand, probably.

Then again his second-oldest brother had gone to jail, when Adam was just a few years old. He’d never seen the bastard again.

Dammit. He was starving. He found his careful way down the broken stairs and edged outside, pulling his hat low over his face.

Someone was waiting for him.

 

* * *

 

The youngest of Evelyn’s sons had committed murder. (An accident, the one with the pierced ears had vehemently insisted, manslaughter, that wasn’t the same as murder, right?)

This was, of course, how the telephone conversation opened. It would have been nice if she could have at the very least pretended she was not calling in a favor. But then, the spy supposed as he breathed out smoke into the frigid air, the thinly-disguised tension in her voice would have given her away immediately anyway. To him, at least. Evelyn was a woman of composure.

Adam was a sweet boy, she’d said. He wasn’t a killer, just there’d been an accident. He wasn’t even nineteen yet, but she couldn’t afford the kind of lawyer the victim’s family had. She’d already lost one son to the prison system, please, couldn’t he help?

The spy had cursed his bleeding heart.

Now, he stood beneath the rusting neon sign of an empty building. The boy had left tracks, clues. None of his brothers had been terribly inclined to help except for the third-youngest, Gabriel, and the spy had been amused. Imagine an angel helping the fallen first man, instead of hurling him from the garden.

Then again, perhaps that was what would happen after all. Banishment was the only way out, really.

Gabriel (“It’s, s’just Gabe, man, c’mon.”) had given him a map, one his brother had drawn. It was an astonishingly good map, one he would have assumed traced from an atlas if not for the careful custom pathways marked out on it. “These red spots, these’re all our good hangouts,” Gabriel had said uneasily. “They’ll all got graffiti on them.”

“They’ll all _have._ ”

“S’what I said.”

Indeed. But the spy had taken the map, and assured Evelyn (perhaps more tenderly than was warranted for an old flame) that he would find her son, and left.

The spy was a man without equal in his job. He located the boy’s hiding spot in under an hour. Now he simply had to wait.

 

* * *

 

Adam had tried to ignore the guy in the suit and peacoat when he slipped out of the alley. He froze when the man said, “Adam Cassidy, I presume?”—and then he bolted.

Great time for him to slip on the ice, too. While he was sprawled on the ground, bitching and cursing, the man strolled up and peered down at him over an expensive-looking cigarette. He was wearing a ski mask. It was cold, but it wasn’t that cold. “You needn’t run,” he advised. “I am a friend of your mother’s.”

“You–y, you, what?”

“I believe you heard me,” the man said dryly. “And she has requested that I keep you out of jail. Accident or not, you killed the son of a very prominent member of the city council. Believe me when I say you have very few options.”

Shit. Shit, dammit, God and hell and Jesus. “I don‘, I don’ need help.”

The man lifted one eyebrow. “I beg to differ. From where I am standing, you appear to be rather compromised. Hungry, too, I would wager?”

Adam hesitated. “… y’really know my ma?” he ventured, picking himself up. With a slightly exaggerated sigh, the man reached into his coat, and plucked out an envelope. One with Adam’s name on it, in his mother’s handwriting. He snatched it out of the man’s hand and scuttled backwards a few steps.

The letter was from his mother, alright. She called him Bambi and everything. This man was an old boyfriend of hers, she wrote, a man with connections. He can help. Trust him.

Grimacing, Adam stowed the letter in his pocket. Looked the man, with his fancy ski mask and cigarette and all. “…Alright,” he said at last. “So, so then now what?”

 

* * *

 

He could not return home, the man said. At Adam’s instantly outraged protest, he added, “For the present, boy. Do you think the house is not being watched? You would be arrested at once. They are already looking at charging your brother Gabriel as an accessory.”

He was right, and probably that was what Adam started hating most about this nameless son of a bitch: every word that came out of his mouth made sense. Truths he wanted nothing to do with.

The man took him to lunch. Nowhere Adam had been before, much too fancy for that. When he had balked, the man chuckled to himself. “Never mind. I would rather pay for you than eat at one of those dreadful pizzerias your sort seems so fond of.”

Adam’s _sort_. Great.

But the bistro the man had chosen was nice, nicer than Adam really felt comfortable in. Apparently the man had some kind agreement with the place, too, because they recognized him and didn’t ask about his ski mask, which he didn’t take off once they got inside. Weirdo. They ate chicken and some kind of fancy potato thing, and Adam finally said: “So, uh, this, this’s great, man, but how exactly are you plannin’ on keepin’ me outta prison?”

The man smiled.

The man began to speak of a job. A very elite, unusual job, out in New Mexico, one that could use his particular skillset: mapmaking, speed, able to hold his own in a fight. The sort of job for the sort of company that could make all his problems go away.

The sort of job, the man mentioned casually, that would pay the kind of money that would get his family out of their three-bedroom rental, and into literally anywhere else.

Adam sat up a little straighter and started listening a little harder, when he said that.

 

* * *

 

The place was called the Badlands. The air was hot and dry and Adam was real glad he’d brought his hat because the sun pounded down like crazy. He’d met a real nice girl named Miss Pauling, she’d driven him here in her little purple truck and artfully fended off each and every one of his lazy attempts at flirting. That was fine. Adam hadn’t really put his heart into it. Kinda he’d left that back in Boston, with his family, the one he’d still not gotten to see. It was almost a week later. He’d never gone this long without seeing at least one of his brothers. He hoped they wouldn’t really charge Gabe with anything.

Miss Pauling dropped him off at the base. The company was called RED, for short, he couldn’t remember the rest. He’d find his seven teammates inside, she told him, they were working on hiring one last one before the job really started. “Okay,” he said. “Uh, alright, yeah, cool, thanks. Thanks.”

Miss Pauling smiled. “Sure. See you later, Scout.”

Scout. Right. Yeah. Not Adam, not anymore.

Scout watched her drive away, and then turned north by northeast, toward home. All he could see was desert.


	89. overdose

**TENNESSEE, 1968**

* * *

 

They caught him. They'd caught him because he'd been stupid and angry and high on something, he didn't even fucking know what, but enough of it that going and burning down that abandoned apartment building he'd been squatting in had seemed like a great idea at the time. Noah didn't even put up a fight when they arrested him. He'd been distracted. The apartment fire looked just like something he'd painted, gouache on wood, just before his father found out about him and Samson.

Not to say he didn't get mad at all. He got plenty mad, in holding. He raged and snarled and threatened and was generally ignored, because no matter how angry he was he couldn't melt the iron holding him. Eventually, worn out and hungry and fighting a losing battle against withdrawal symptoms and paranoia, he had dropped into the darkest corner of his cell and hid his face in his hands. Pretended he wasn't crying. He was a grown fucking man, real men didn't cry.

Then again real men didn't get caught kissing other men.

It seemed like he was there a long time. Not that Noah had so much as a solitary clue about how the legal system worked. He'd never been caught before.

He passed the time by telling himself stories. He wasn't a storyteller by nature, he was an artist. Maybe that was why all his stories were grim, ugly parodies. Most of them ended in steel-edged moral lessons.  _And the white fairy was locked away to be forgotten forever and everyone else lived happily ever after. The end._ Hahahaha.

And then one day they let him out. When he asked about a trial they said there wasn't one. Who paid bail? They wouldn't tell him. Noah walked out a free and bewildered man.

Still broke. Still craving something he couldn't define, something all the drugs and all the sex hadn't been able to satisfy. The fire had come close. The fire always did, he reflected with disgust as he ate stolen crackers, huddled in the narrow noon shade of an alleyway. Everything his father had ever said about him was right. What a freak.

At least in jail he'd been given food three times a day.

He lit two more buildings on fire before he caught a Grayhound and fled to another city.

 

* * *

 

Noah had decided when he was sixteen that he would die of skin cancer. It was the only logical thing, barring car accidents or something, but he wasn't a person who took many life-threatening risks. No, the sun would poison him through his colorless skin and he would get melanoma and he wouldn't bother getting it treated, probably. It didn't seem terribly worth it.

He was so certain of this that when he realized he'd taken too much of the stuff he'd bartered off the girl with the sharp eyes and the mean grin, it took him utterly by surprise. Overdose wasn't how he was supposed to go. It sounded more unpleasant than melanoma. And of course he didn't have the luck to have it kick in somewhere private where he could be ill and die in peace, no. He started vomiting blood and bile waiting for a train at the station, choking and gasping, and the people around him had panicked and called 911. Someone helped him to a bench and threw a jacket over him, gave him water. Dimly, Noah remembered thinking it was the nicest anyone had been to him in months. He passed out before the ambulance arrived.

The next thing he was aware of was white, white, white. An IV in his arm. An oxygen mask over his face. He was cold and wearing a hospital gown. No one was there. He coughed hideously, splattering the mask strapped over his mouth with spit and mucus, and passed out again.

When he woke up the second time, someone was moving around the machines he was hooked up to. A nurse? No, maybe a doctor. He had a long white coat. Tiny glasses. A thick accent and brusque tone when he spoke to Noah. "Oh, finally. I had suspected you comatose."

Noah's throat was too dry for him to answer with anything coherent. The doctor clucked his tongue. "Don't try talking, I suspect it will make you worse. You have been unconscious for three days. Congratulations on returning to the living."

The doctor rattled on, filling him in. He had overdosed on a completely poisonous mix of chemicals and powdered glass. His stomach had been pumped. He had a sunburn. Albino? he asked, yes, Noah said. "Ah, good. I removed a mole from your back, by the way, I'm having it biopsied."

Were ... could a doctor do that without consent? Noah stared at him. Didn't ask. Instead he asked where he was.

"New Mexico."

"I-- _what_?"

"It is a state," the doctor said absently, fiddling with something on the side of one of the machines. "You were flown here from, ah ... where was it? Alabama, after you were stabilized."

"But ...  _why?_ "

The doctor turned to him. Smiled pleasantly. "You are about to be offered a very unusual job, my friend. One that I would overwhelmingly suggest you take, because otherwise there are a number of law enforcement officers waiting for your release." He leaned in a little and added, as if in confidence: "I am not supposed to tell you this. I thought you would prefer to be aware."

"... Oh," Noah mumbled. "Thanks."

 

* * *

 

It had rained the day before Noah met Miss Pauling for the first time, a gushing early-spring rain he hadn't expected to find in the desert. She was cute, so that was something, and he liked the way her eyes widened when she saw him. Still stunning, even after two months of homelessness. The shower had helped, but she gave him a look like she knew exactly what he was doing when he flashed her a smile.

She immediately became a non-option when he learned she was the one offering the job, and moreover would theoretically be his manager. Not that it was impossible, just Noah could find less risky options. But she was pleasant to talk to, and presented a very convincing case. Two days after he'd met the man who was only called Medic, and not even an hour into talking to Miss Pauling, Noah signed that contract that would tie him to the Reliable Excavation Demolition company.

Miss Pauling smiled, businesslike and professional, and said her goodbyes, and that she hoped he was feeling better. He was, he thought, looking out the window at the endless field of blossoms that the desert rain had coaxed into bloom. He felt a lot better.

 


	90. asylum

**[CLASSIFIED], 196X**

* * *

 

The girl was tiny and dark, with shadowed eyes. She was seventeen, according to the file open in front of the Administrator, but she looked more like twelve. Swallowed up in the too large institution issued uniform, washed out and pale, she looked like an even younger twelve. She did not look like she had ever killed anyone. She didn't look like she could hurt a fly. She looked like a breath of wind would dissolve her to dust.

"Why did you want to see me, ma'am?" she asked, with a tiny, raw voice. "You're not the regular doctor."

"I'm a specialist. Your case has generated some interest."

The girl nodded politely. "Yes, ma'am. Doctor...?"

"You can call me Helen."

The girl's smooth brow furrowed, her shadowy green eyes looked wary. "You aren't a doctor?"

"Please call me Helen."

"Yes'm." She hesitated, as though to apologize. "Helen. Ma'am. I'm sorry. I just...you. You asked to see m-me. Without their medication. The things they give me. W-why?"

"For assessment. Your case is interesting."

The girl's eyes hardened, she shot a glance over her shoulder at the two orderlies who guarded the door. Her teeth clenched, tiny white pearls between rosebud lips. The men had cinched the leather straps on the chairs arms tight, into holes that had clearly been punched specifically for her delicate wrists. Her hands clenched against them. "I'm not crazy. They tied me to my bed for two days and they didn't feed me, until there weren't any drugs left in me. For you. Please tell me it's because you think I may not be crazy."

"They say you murdered an orderly. They want you tried as a murderer."

"I did murder an orderly. I suppose I am a murderer." She sounded only honest when she said it, not sorry or angry or disturbed.

"Why did you do it?"

She blinked, like it was the first time anyone had asked. Helen was not easy to perturb, but she had the disturbing suspicion that it actually was. "I did it because he said he would hurt me. That doesn't make me crazy."

The Adminstrator flicked her eyes downward, to the file in her hands. Her protege's file, she hoped. "Why did you kill your grandfather?"

Tears sprang into the girl's eyes, and she bowed her head for a long minute. "Because he told me to," she answered faintly, scarcely managing to speak. She paused another long minute. "Because he _asked_ me to," she clarified.

The Administrator pretended to make some notes. She had to at least play the part. She didn’t look anything like someone who belonged in the medical industry, but it wasn’t as though she could send a proxy. Not for this. This was important. She had put on a cardigan to try and soften the harshness of her general demeanour. It had not helped. “Gentlemen,” she addressed the orderlies by the door. “Give us a few minutes in private, and then you may take Miss Pauling back to her room.”

The girl slumped visibly in her chair, and one of her tears slipped away. She didn’t lose her composure, but there was defeat written on her features. “I hoped you would listen. I’m not lying,” she said softly. “I only did it because he was going to die anyway, and he was just in so much pain. And we watched my Nan die, my Papa and me, and he couldn’t do it for her, and he was just so sorry. Wh-when he asked...oh. Never mind. It must sound crazy.”

This made Helen smile, and it wasn’t the sort of smile that the girl was used to. It wasn’t the kind of smile she liked. But it was the first time anyone had really smiled at her in her in months. It wasn’t the empty, insane smile of her drooling roommate, or the bland patronizing smile of the nurse who cooed and injected her with tranquilizers. It wasn’t a good smile. But it was better than anything she’d gotten in months. She wished she weren’t too afraid to smile back. She really missed smiling.

“The only thing about you that has sounded crazy is that you managed to murder an orderly in a mental institution. A man three times your size, and with years of experience in restraining violent lunatics. You caused such a stir that you’ve been under mild to moderate sedation ever since.” The Administrator steepled her fingers. “I don’t believe you belong in here. I don’t believe you’re crazy. I also don’t believe you killed an orderly, single-handed. They have no video footage, there were no witnesses. Only you and a dead man.”

There was a way the not-a-doctor’s voice sounded, slightly hungry. Like she was starving for some particular answer. “...it did happen. I didn’t imagine it, I knew what I was doing. I had to do it. It...I needed to. He would have hurt me. I didn’t want him to hurt me. Those are reasons. Those are _good reasons_.”

Helen’s smile hadn’t changed. “Those are good reasons.” She reached into a pocket of her cardigan, withdrew a syringe. The girl blanched and recoiled from the sight of it. “Tell me. Would leaving this place be a good reason?”

She didn’t know what to do but nod. Helen seemed to want her to nod. She could do more than nod. “Yes. I need to get out. I can’t stay here, I can’t. I’d rather die, but they won’t let me kill myself. My Papa didn’t know, he didn’t want this. I wasn’t supposed to get caught.”

“I need you to get caught.” Helen pushed the syringe across the table. It was empty, the girl could see now. To the edge, where the girl would be able to reach it, if she managed to shift her chair forward and strain her pale, slender hands. Oh. Oh god. “I need you to prove to me that you can kill a man, when it’s necessary. And I need you to get caught. And then I will need you to come with me.”

“...ma’am. You...this isn’t a...you’re...I don’t understand, ma’am, I don’t. This is crazy. This is...this is a trick. This is an awful trick, this is a test. They’re...oh god. Oh no, oh god. You’re trying t-to...to get a confession? I already said I-I...I killed the other man. I did, I killed him. I had to, he _made me_.”

Helen stood up, behind the table. She wasn’t as tall as she looked, but of course she wasn’t strapped to her chair, either. She circled around, picked the syringe up again. Put it in the girl’s fingers. “You’re a murderer already. It’s a binary state, believe me, we have it in common. What’s one more? I swear you won’t be punished. I swear I’ll take you from here. I’ll have you fed and given clothes. I’ll see to it that you’re educated in a way that will serve _me_ , primarily, but you, as well. In time. Where’s the risk in trusting me?”

The girl was still, her fingers only lightly clasping the cool glass between her fingers. A few seconds passed, she was aware of the woman watching her, in the purple cardigan. Her hand closed around the syringe, hiding it from immediate view. “I want to get out of here now,” she said, her voice steady, quiet. “Send them in. I want to go back. I want to leave. Send them in.”

The Administrator smiled again, worse than before. “Very well, Miss Pauling.”

\------

She was delivered to the hospital that the Administrator specified in an unmarked white van. She had to be lifted out, she was bound in a comically large straight jacket. She was numb, her eyes blank. Not drugged? Helen had been very explicit that the girl not be drugged. Not drugged. But be careful with her. She was a murderess. Killed two men. Two grown men. She was placed and sat woodenly in the wheelchair that the Administrator stood behind. A prop, a show. They would not be going into the hospital.

When the white van had pulled away, Helen undid the straps on the white canvas jacket. She half-expected that the girl would just remain seated, but she stood up and spread her arms, shivering in the cold. They had dropped her off, still in her institution whites, thin cotton. There were tears on her face. The tears turned into sniffles and the sniffles into sobs. Wordlessly she threw herself at the Administrator, crying unrestrainedly into the woman’s shoulder. She wasn’t touched, or hugged, or much more than even just acknowledged.

Helen shrugged out of her cardigan. Put it around the girl’s shaking shoulders. “Compose yourself, Miss Pauling.”

And Miss Pauling did, immediately. “Yes ma’am. S-sorry ma’am.”

Well. That was a promising start.

 


	91. midnight

She brought the letter to church. Midnight Mass, on her own, for the first time in years. Usually she tagged along with one of the boys, one of their families. But not this year. This year, just her and the letter. She brought it everywhere, it was getting weathered at the corners, in the folds where she kept gently smoothing it out to send her eyes roving over the unfamiliar writing. A neat, firm hand, not her son’s messy scribble. Not a woman’s delicate cursive.

She sat in her pew as the congregation sang hymns around her, and read the letter instead of her missal. She went through the motions. The letter was a thing that had never happened, never in all her years of standing and kneeling, singing the songs and saying the words. She’d never prayed and been answered.

 

> _Dear Mrs. Cassidy,_
> 
> _I hope the holiday season finds you as well as could be expected. You don’t know me, but I worked with your son. He and I are very close, very dear friends. I’m writing you this letter because it’s the first Christmas he’s not wanted to contact his family, and that doesn’t sit right with me. I know he doesn’t have it in him to reach out to you, and I don’t want to push him. I’m sure you wish you knew what his reasons are, but they aren’t mine to tell. I respect his privacy, and I hope you won’t hold it against me for doing so._
> 
> _I’m sure you’ve worried. I don’t blame you, especially if you knew anything about the job he’d been doing for the last few years. The truth is, it was a lot harder on him than I think he wants to admit to his family. I think he’s afraid of how different he is, since the last time he saw you. I think he wants to know better who he is before he sees his family again. He misses you all, I know that for sure, and he wishes he could come home. I hope you can forgive him for not being able to, just yet._
> 
> _I worry that a letter like this out of the blue will only serve to concern you further, and I promise that that isn’t my intent. I just wanted to assure you, because it’s Christmas, that your son is healthier, happier, and better than he’s been in a long time. There was a Christmas a few years ago and you may not remember the call you got from him, but he was very drunk. I know he must have really upset you, and I always felt bad that I allowed it to happen. I’ve thought about that night a lot. He doesn’t remember, but I was there and I do. I don’t think I knew before then just how much his family means to him. Mine doesn’t mean as much to me. If through my inaction I caused you fear or pain, I’ve just always wanted to apologize for that, and I hope you don’t mind my taking this opportunity to do so._
> 
> _So, this letter is just to assure you that he’s safe. I have to ask you in advance to forgive me, for not telling you where we are. I’m sending this letter in confidence, I think he would feel betrayed if he knew I’d done it, whatever my intent. I imagine you worry that he’s lonely. I think he’ll always be a little bit lonely, as long as he’s far from home. I don’t think we can change that. But I wanted to promise you that, even as far away as he is, he is loved. He is very, very loved._
> 
> _You may also be interested to know he has a girlfriend, now. She loves him just as much as I do, probably more, some days. I'm sure you remember about your son that he can also make himself a tremendous pain in the ass when he feels like it. When I can't put up with him, she does and she is a wonderful girl. She takes care of the both of us, and we’re lucky that she does. I think she would be a little bit lost without anyone to look after. She’s like me, a little, neither of us have any family left. We’ve had to make a little family with the three of us together, and your son is at the heart of it. I think we’d both be really lost without him._
> 
> _I’m lucky to have met your son. He’s done more for me than I could ever explain. He’s been family to me when I had none of my own. He’s been my best friend and more than that. I owe him my life and my sanity and I only hope that one day soon I can meet you and thank you in person. I’m proud and grateful and privileged to know your son, and to know how much he loves you only makes me wish all the more for the day I’ll finally get to meet you. I’m sure it will be an honour._
> 
> _I hope the enclosed photo is proof enough that he’s safe and well. We have our ups and downs, but any family does. I hope by this time next year, or maybe sooner, we’ll have all reached a point where we can bring our families together._
> 
> _Wishing you the best for the holidays,_
> 
> _Yours sincerely,_
> 
> _N.D._

It had been taken in what looked like the lobby of a very expensive hotel, all brass and wrought iron and marble floors. Uniformed bellmen were blurred in the background, a broad mahogany front desk. It was unidentifiable, no sign or hint of a name or location. Just a beautiful, fancy hotel. It could have been anywhere.

N.D. was the blonde man in the picture. She had always thought her boys were handsome, but next to this pale, muscular creature, decked out in an impeccably tailored suit, dove grey tweed over sky blue, her son looked skinny and tall and awkward. N.D. was standing, his fingers lightly clasping the fingertips of a lovely, dark-haired young girl, holding them above her head as she spun, the skirt of her purple dress flaring around dimpled knees. The girlfriend. Well, she was certainly a pretty girl. Tiny, though. And those didn't look like hips meant for childbearing. But perhaps the grandmotherly part of her was getting ahead of itself.

But, Adam. The picture was more than an answered prayer. It was a promise, a scrap of proof that Adam was still out there, somewhere. There were parts of it that worried her, the ways he didn’t look like her son. His gauntness, his shadowed eyes, the way he’d lost some of his boyishness, looked visibly older than she imagined him. The light, barely visible scarring on his arms, just below where he’d cuffed the sleeves of a pinstriped white and red dress shirt. She wouldn’t have noticed these if she hadn’t spent long, careful minutes staring at every detail of the photo.

She lingered on the fact that he was smiling, the same old laughingly crooked grin. That the photograher had caught him halfway in the act of reaching out to take the girl’s other hand, the one extended towards him. That presumably his girlfriend had bullied him into wearing an exquisitely cut waistcoat, a dark red woolen suit coat. This he had taken off, carried loosely over his arm, and halfway undid the tie. He had also, and she remembered how fiercely stubborn he could be on this point, insisted on retaining a scruffy brown cap. She didn’t know if it was the same one she’d last seen him in, but she wanted dearly to believe that it was. Adam had always held onto things. This was just so typical that it never failed to bring tears to her eyes.

She turned the picture over, just to remind herself of her favourite part. The back of the photo was labeled in feminine, swooping cursive, dated just that past September, with the notation “My 25th birthday. P. P. S. - I love you”

 _He is loved. He is very, very loved_.

Well. If she couldn’t have him home, what more could she have prayed for?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, dear friends.
> 
> Love,  
> Pemm & PreludeInZ


	92. pneumonia

It was Pauling’s stupid fucking useless broken-down crap truck, at the heart of it. Noah had _told_ her it needed to be replaced soon or _something,_ but no! No, no, Pauling couldn’t bear to part with her little rubbish scrap heap. Noah had wanted to get a Citroën SM, a teal one, but the garage only fit one car and Pauling refused to give up the space.

A Citroën wouldn’t have slid into a ditch in a goddamn blizzard, probably, while they had Pauling bundled up in about six blankets and wheezing horribly in the middle seat. Noah stared at the five or so feet he could see of the road, and then looked over at Scout, who sat behind the wheel. “Well,” Noah said, gradually, “you’re the one who had snow back home. _I_ don’t know what to do.”

“Yeah? An’ I ain’t _been_ home in about ten years, y’damn hick, an’ it didn’t barely snow at all last winter.” Scout exhaled hard, and his breath was just visible in the cab. The heater was doing its best, but it didn’t have much to show for it. Now he put the car in park, chewing his lip as he looked down at Pauling. “Fuckin’ told you we shoulda gone yesterday, Christmas Eve or no, you don’t screw with pneumonia. Pneumonia can fuckin’ ki—”

“Shut up, I know, you were right,” Noah interrupted, ferreting one of Pauling’s hands out from under the blankets. It was freezing. “Tell me all about how wrong I am all the time _after_ we figure out what to do. Pauling, honey? You holding up?”

Pauling coughed, viciously, dry and scratchy. “Nnnm. What’s. What’s going on?”

“The car stalled, honey.” Noah glanced outside at the whiteout. “Um. I think we’re halfway to Gil’s, maybe.”

“A third’a the way,” Scout said.

“That, then.” Noah exhaled and pulled Pauling against him, germs be damned. He never got sick anyway, unless he felt like it. “… So what do we do? Get out and push?”

“No, ugh. Frickin‘, I mean we can’t push it the rest’a the way there, I doubt we could push it outta the ditch. Not in this. Get hypothermia an’ die, or it’d roll back on us or somethin’. No.”

Silence fell over the car. Outside, the storm howled, with no sign of slowing. Pauling sniffled, shivering.

If they’d just damn well taken her to Gil yesterday, before the storm rolled in. Gil was only a few miles away, but Noah couldn’t even have said with confidence what direction the farmhouse was in, now. Not to mention they were on the far side of nowhere; the chances of help passing by were slim. “So … what do we do?”

Scout sighed. He looked down at Pauling, who seemed only dimly aware of her surroundings. Noah watched him, trying to suppress the rising nervousness. He hadn’t been around a truly sick person since, well, since Scout stopped getting infected with something every other week. He hadn’t missed the worry. “We can’t sit around here,” Scout said. “Not with her like this, an’ all.” His voice dropped. “I mean, this–Pyro, this could go bad real fuckin’ fast. I mean, y’know that. You’ve seen it.”

“I know,” Noah said quietly. “I remember.”

Scout looked back out the window again, for a long few seconds. “Alright,” he said, and unbuckled his seatbelt.

Noah stiffened. “You’re not going out there.”

“Ain’t got much of a choice.”

“You’re not fucking going out there, you’ll get turned around or trip on something or your leg’ll give out and you’ll fucking freeze to death.” _And Pauling’s fucking lungs will drown her and you’ll both be gone and_ **_then_** _what will I do?_

Scout was giving him a _look._ “Yeah? Then what d’you suggest, smart guy?”

Noah had nothing. Of course he didn’t. “… you’re sure you can make it to Gil’s? You won’t get lost?”

“When’s the last time I got lost, huh?” Scout said, a little more gently. “I been to Gil’s. We’re only half a mile out from the house, Gil’s is another mile an’ a half down the road, left on the fork.”

Noah said nothing, and his worry must have been plain on his face. Scout’s expression softened, and he leaned just a little over Pauling to run his fingers through Noah’s curls. “I’ll be fine, yeah? Don’t worry about me none. I’m tough.”

“I know you are,” he said, still unhappy, but he returned the kiss Scout leaned in to give him. “Be careful. Take my scarf.”

“I will, don’t worry, c’mon. Keep her safe. And _you_ keep warm, here’s the keys. Tank’s full.”

“Okay,” Noah mumbled.

An acutely familiar sense of helplessness settled over him as he watched Scout vanish into the storm.

 

* * *

 

It was cold and breathing hurt, and her sinuses were killing her. Pauling could only just make out Noah’s scent; a few seconds’ more of gathering herself and she realized she was leaning against him.

They were in the car, weren’t they? The engine was going, but they weren’t moving. The wind seemed terribly loud. Pauling sniffed and coughed and groaned and said, “Noah?” Nothing. Louder: “Noah …?”

“Nn? Oh—you’re awake?”

“Unfortunately,” she mumbled, trying to swallow down the gunk in her mouth. It didn’t work. “What’s going on?” Hadn’t she asked that earlier? “I thought we were going to Gil’s…”

At her side Noah stirred more, shivering. Pauling blinked, glancing down at the three or four blankets engulfing her. Noah had none. “We are. Were. Um. Truck went into a ditch. Blizzard got … is really bad. Do you feel okay?”

Sick, gross, cold. A little hard to breathe. Just a cold. She hadn’t really understood why Scout was so adamant about getting her out to Gil. “Sick,” she said, trying to sit up. Ooh, she was sore. “We’re in a ditch? Where’s Scout?”

“He went ahead on foot.”

That pulled her, a bit, from her stupor. “He—in _this_? You let him go out in _this_ , with his leg, _Noah_ —”

“It was that or sit here and do nothing,” Noah said, not quite a shout but not evenly, either. “Of course I didn’t want him to go, but we can’t get the truck out of the ditch in the storm and I don’t want to wait it out with you being this sick.”

“I’m _fine,_ Noah—”

“No you aren’t,” and this time he _had_ snapped at her, sharp and raw. “I watched Scout die of pneumonia once, on the team, his lungs filled up with fluid and he suffocated. _You_ don’t fucking respawn if you die, Pauling, so excuse me if I kind of want to keep you alive.”

There was an intensity and finality to his answer that left her silent, staring at him. He swallowed. “… Scout never gets lost. And Gil’s isn’t far. He’ll get him to come pick us up. He’ll make it.”

He said it more like he was trying to convince himself than her.

 

* * *

 

Between them they’d rearranged the blankets, huddling under them together. The heater was going, and once Noah had slipped out of the car to make sure the exhaust pipe wasn’t backed up with snow. An hour passed. Pauling could read the worry on Noah’s face. She did not mention that it was a little harder for her to breathe, now.

When she said Noah’s name, for the second time he did not seem to hear her. This time she touched his arm, and he winced. “What?”

“… We should probably come up with a plan B,” she said quietly, swiping at her running nose. “In case—”

“He’s going to come back.”

He didn’t look at her while he said it. Pauling hesitated, then furrowed her brow. “I didn’t say that he wasn’t. But the gas isn’t going to last forever, and we don’t have any water.”

“There’s snow.”

“Yes, and we can eat that if we get desperate, but it’ll be ice water and we’re trying to stay warm, here,” she said. “How long has it been snowing?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Six, seven hours?”

“I—” Pauling broke off, hacking into her arm. Faintly she felt Noah’s arm, wrapped around her shoulders, tighten its grip. “—hnnm. Will it let up soon, do you think?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about snow, I lived in Tennessee for my whole life, I thought _last_ winter was a lot of snow.” She could hear the cracks of stress threading through his voice; almost unconsciously she found his leg with her hand, and squeezed it in what she hoped was a reassurring manner. “I don’t know, Pauling, I don’t know fucking anything. If I did I would have listened to Scout when he said we should have gone yesterday.”

“I told him I didn’t think I needed to either,” Pauling said firmly, sitting up a little straighter. “Don’t blame yourself, okay? It’s not going to help.”

“Nothing ever helps, anyway, we’re probably going to die,” Noah muttered. “Scout’s probably already dead. Fuck. I should have _fucking_ told him to go back home and call a tow truck, I am a _fucking idiot_ —”

“ _Noah._ ”

He fell silent, grimacing. Pauling watched him for a careful few seconds before coughing into her arm again and then shaking herself with a great sigh. “Scout never gets lost, you’re right. And it _isn’t_ far to Gil’s. He’s got the road to follow. He’ll be fine, Noah. Anyway,” she added, shivering, “I’m the one who might be dying, I don’t think _I_ should be having to comfort _you._ ”

Noah only grimaced, still staring straight ahead. Shit. “… Noah, please. I’m sorry, it was a joke. It’s how I cope. I’m scared for him, too.” Nothing. She tugged on his coat. “Sweetheart?”

He seemed to deflate. “I. Yeah, no. No, you’re right, I’m sorry.” Twisting, he gathered her into him, pulled her into his lap. Kissed her hair. “I’m, you—you know me, I’m useless when I’m scared.”

“It’s okay,” she said, and then there was a sharp rapping on the window. Before Pauling could look behind her at the driver’s side door, it was pulled open, bringing with it a gush of frigid air.

Scout stuck his head in, his nose and ears vivid red and looking dead-tired. But he was grinning. “Shit, frickin’ warm in here, you two been gettin’ busy without me? Do I gotta tell Gil to wait while you put your panties back on?”

“Oh my God,” Noah said, breathless, and Pauling just smiled.


	93. red cord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> otpprompts  
>  Imagine your OTP in a world where if your soulmate is harmed in any way, you get harmed in the same way. Person A cuts themselves, believing they’ll never find their soulmate. (It’s Person B) Person B finds marks all over their arms and panics in the realization that their soulmate is cutting themselves. What happens beyond there is up to you.  
> \------  
> A take on this prompt. Trigger Warnings for explicit mentions of blood and self-harm.

Pauling couldn’t cook, but she certainly could bake. And she didn’t bake _often_ , because it was a lot of work and made a dreadful mess and Scout wasn’t always readily available to be bargained with to clean it up for her. He’d made some vague excuse about needing to do some work in the barn, and she hadn’t pressed him about it. A long time ago, she’d learned that sometimes Scout just wanted to be left alone, but he wasn’t good at saying so, not in so many words.

But, today she had decided to bake a pie. A gorgeous, autumn apple pie, with the crab apples that Noah and Scout had found, growing wild behind a tumbledown abandoned house, in an old orchard a few properties over. She wasn’t an artist, not like the boys were (Scout’s staunch denial of the fact notwithstanding), but she could make a pretty pie. Pauling was slicing ribbon thin pieces of apples, and rolling them into tiny rosebuds. She nestled them closely in a shortbread crust, and dusted them lightly with cinnamon and sugar. She would pour butter over the whole assembly. It would be almost too pretty to eat.

It took a lot of slicing, but Pauling had always rather liked knife work, especially the delicate sort. And Scout kept the knives in the kitchen wickedly sharp. It made her feel like a sort of surgeon, without any of the unpleasant bleeding.

Well, until she dropped the knife. By instinct--not a good instinct--she reached out to catch it. Her reflexes were good, but her instincts were terrible, and she cried out a sharp “Oh!” as her palm was sliced open. The knife clattered on the ground and blood splattered the kitchen floor.

Pauling had a problem, and this was that she was all right about blood, but not great about bleeding. It was a quirk of her personality she’d been teased about before. Generally she bore up under this teasing with relatively good-humour, because mostly it came from Noah, and that was really the only thing you could do with Noah. It was either that that or smack him, and she’d hurt her hand smacking Noah in the past, and anyway he enjoyed it. A little dizzily, it occurred to her that Noah was only just on the front porch, working on some wood carving project. She should probably yell for him, because it was rather a lot of blood, but she was suddenly too busy wilting limply onto the kitchen floor to devote any further thought to Noah.

\-----

“Ow, _shit_.”

Noah, by some lucky happenstance, was just about to make his way back into the house. He’d misjudged the presence of a knot in the wood of the small, abstract carving he’d been working on. He’d found a gorgeous piece of driftwood, last summer, when they had all three of them gone to the beach. He had needed to be bullied into it, because beach days were not kind to albinism. He’d drawn a lot of stares, shuffling down the shoreline in long pants and a hoodie, but he’d been surprised to find he really enjoyed beachcombing. He hadn’t even paid attention to Scout and Pauling, frolicking half naked in the waves, in favour of sitting on their beach blanket and sorting out all of the stones and sea glass and worn, softened wood that he’d found.

He’d been meaning to get to this piece for ages, and had finally had a quiet day when the mood took him, to sit on the porch, listening to the rain and carefully whittling away shavings of the smooth grey wood. But he’d hit a stubborn knot in the wood, and the knife had slipped, and now his left palm was gashed open. And the beautiful piece of driftwood was ruined, smeared with blood. Fuck’s sake. Well. At least he was no stranger to dressing wounds. He was reminded of a dim and distant memory of Scout, young--God, how had they _ever_ been that young--with his hands sliced open from the piece of broken glass he’d grabbed hold of, some wild-eyed, semi-sane plan he’d had to cut Medic’s throat.

Noah smothered that memory, in favour of heaving himself up off the porch swing, and shouldering the door open. “Pauling!” he called deliberately, through the half-open door, before he came into the house. “Pauling, I cut my hand open because I’m a goddamn klutz, and I thought I’d be a gentleman and give you fair warning before I bring my bloody self indoors. So, get to your fainting couch or whatever, or at least out of the line of sight. Fetch me the first aid kit from the bathroom, if you feel like being helpful.”

No answer. Maybe she’d gone upstairs, but when Noah had last peeked into the kitchen, hunting around for something to snack on while he worked, it looked like she was going to be making delicate apple roses for a good hour. He’d stolen some shortbread dough and been smacked with a spoon. Now he held his hand up, above the level of his heart, with the sleeve of his hoodie bunched over the gash in his palm. “...Pauling, I’m coming in and I don’t have a free hand to catch your silly ass if you keel over, so consider yourself to have been duly warned.”

Noah crossed the living room briskly, intending to get a towel from the kitchen to spare the nice ones in the bathroom, and then go retrieve the first aid kit. Scout insisted on a meticulously well stocked first aid kid. Noah knew the reasons and had never given him shit about it.

Well, at first glance, the kitchen was empty. At second glance, Pauling was crumpled on the floor and there was blood smeared on the edge of the counter. Noah stared stupidly for a moment, because she looked incongruently small and helpless. When he thought of Pauling--well, she was small, sure, but not in a vulnerable way. And never, never helpless. Maybe that one time she’d gotten stuck on the roof. His hand throbbed, or he remembered that it was throbbing and he snapped out of it. “Shit. Pauling?” Awkwardly, he nudged her shoulder with the toe of his foot. Then again in the ribs, until he thought her eyelids fluttered. The most he got was a faint, half-whimpered moan. “Pauling, honey...ah, fuck.”

He stepped over her gingerly, grabbed a kitchen towel, bound it clumsily around his palm and . “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered as a round red droplet escaped from his clenched fist and splattered in her hair. “Shit. Fuck. Okay, stay there. Oh my god, well _obviously_. Pauling, can you hear me? Can you...um. Is it your hand too, Pauling? What the hell. Oh, and you ruined the damn pie, I’m not eating anything you’ve _bled_ on. I was looking _forward_ to that.”

Noah bit his lip. This was not something that was supposed to happen to Pauling. Scout he could handle, there’d been a point in their lives where Scout’s blackouts bordered on the mundane. Noah had gotten good enough at handling Scout that he’d rarely even managed to hit the ground. “Shit. Pauling, this is very inconvenient.” He also had a terrible bedside manner, and he didn’t _mean_ to, it was just hard not to be snippy when Pauling was the one who was supposed to have her shit together and not do dumb things like slice her hand open and have a fainting spell in the kitchen. “Okay. Stay... _fuck_. Don’t go anywhere.”

He grumbled the whole way back to the front door, leaned out onto the porch and took a deep breath. Everyone had always assumed that Scout was the loud one. But Pyro had a hell of a set of lungs, and when he wanted to, he could _bellow_. “SCOUT. GET YOUR ASS IN HERE, PAULING NEEDS YOU.” As an afterthought, he added, “AND I WOULDN’T MIND A HAND EITHER.”

\------

There was a _ritual_ to the thing, and there was no fucking point and it would ruin his whole afternoon if it got interrupted. Scout had frozen with his heart in his throat when Noah had first shouted. Then he’d cursed and stared blackly at the long, straight line he’d carefully opened in his palm. But it would be worse if Noah had to come out and find him, because that would mean the risk of getting caught at it, and having _that_ stupid fight. This was the last thing in the world Scout wanted. Because there was no way either of them could possibly understand.

He stuffed the razor into a hay bale at the back of the barn. His hand he’d already pressed a readied gauze pad against, from the stash he kept hidden, tucked in a plastic bag in a rusty old toolbox on a shelf too high for either of his partners to reach. Hastily, with less care than he would have wanted--less than technically he _needed_ \--he rewrapped his palm and flexed his fingers. Winced, not entirely satisfied but tided over, for the moment. He was blackly, irrationally irritated by the rudeness of the interruption, and he stormed a bit, on his way out of the barn.

“God, Scout, about time.” Noah was waiting on the porch, with a kitchen towel wrapped around his palm. “Pauling’s…”

“Oh, what’ve y’done now, you goddamn moron?” Scout interrupted, jogging up the path from the barn. One of Scout’s favourite kitchen’ towels, he noted, irritably. Ruined, now, all red with blood. The pain in his own hand gave him a refreshing edge of clarity to his thoughts, and he took the stairs two at a time. Caught hold of Noah’s wrist and peeked under the towel. “Forget whatever Pauling wants, you friggin’ idiot. Ain’t you ever learned to be careful with knives?”

“I was plenty careful, and shut up. I slipped while I was carving something and wrecked it. I’m annoyed already, I don’t need you to be a _prick_ about it. And I’m _fine_. But there’s been a damn inconvenient coincidence and Pauling’s got the exact same problem, only _she’s_ laid out on her ass on the kitchen because she’s a silly little twit who can’t handle the sight of blood.”

Well, that was different. “Pyro, fuck’s sake, y’don’t just leave her there!”

Noah snapped back as Scout shouldered past him, gesturing with the bloodied palm he was still holding up, the thumb of his other hand pressed against it. “Well, I can’t _help her_ , and your stupid ass wasn’t in the house, Scout. So _quit_ being a goddamn stupid jackass, and…”

God. He pushed the door open, crossed to the kitchen. “Miss Pauling?”

Well, all the irritation with Pyro had flooded out of him, because she had pushed herself up on her elbows and was staring dizzily, helplessly around the kitchen. She’d left a few smudged handprints of blood across the floor, and had red fingerprints brushing her cheek. And Scout was intensely thankful that he had a red cord of pain, a secret thing to hang onto, and keep his head level. Because a year ago this would have been enough to set him panicking. Instead he just dropped down next to her, gently helped her sit up. “...Aw, Pauling, sweetheart.”

“...Scout.” Her voice was faint and small and disconnected, a little girl’s voice. “It’s a mess.”

“No, darlin’, I know. It’s okay. You wanna lemme see your hand? Here, you close your eyes, it’s fine. Okay?”

She’d buried her face against his chest, and he was carefully holding her hand, looking at the clean, sharp gash across her palm. Same as his. Same as Noah’s. It was a weird, profoundly unsettling coincidence, and Scout staunchly refused to think about it. “Noah _kicked_ me.”

Noah made a noise of protest from the doorway. “I did not _kick her_ , I nudged her with my _toe_ , because I didn’t want to get blood all over her shirt, _not_ that she needs my help with that.”

“Chrissakes, Pyro, shut up or go get the first aid kit or do somethin’ fuckin’ useful, for once? Please?”

Scout didn’t notice the flicker of hurt that crossed Noah’s features, as he went huffing out of the kitchen. He fumbled in his pocket, tugged out a spare pad of gauze and pressed it against her palm. She whimpered and clung tighter. “Shh, shh. Sorry babe. Gotta put a bit of pressure on it, stop the bleeding. Won’t take long.” Pauling and blood. It was just about the most ridiculous thing. He’d heard stories about Miss Pauling, and the myriad, improbable ways in which she could kill a man. He wondered if she’d always had this problem, or if it was something she’d picked up, lost her desensitization to. “Honey, it’s okay. All right? Ain’t deep or anything.”

“There’s blood on my face.”

“I see that, baby. We’ll fix it. C’mere.” He scooped her off the floor, and met Noah on the way to the living room, returning with the first aid kit tucked awkwardly under his arm. He was scowling and sighed exasperatedly when Scout didn’t have a free hand to take it off him. Scout suddenly seemed to realize that he was, in fact, being a bit of a jackass. “...shit. Thanks. Sorry, man, fuck. I didn’t mean...s’just...y’know, it’s Miss Pauling.”

Noah muttered something under his breath, did an awkward shuffling dance and dropped the first aid kit onto the couch. “Oh, sure, yeah. Pretty little Pauling gets the big damn hero act. Great. Really, just so fucking sweet of you. I liked you better when you were fucking gay.”

“Pyro, Jesus…”

“...guys, don’t fight,” Pauling protested, improving by the minute, now that she was seated with her feet up and her hand above her heart. And not visibly bleeding any longer. “Ow. Oh, hell. Ouch. Shit, and I ruined my pie. Scout, it was a stupid accident, I’m just a damn ninny about bleeding.”

Noah dropped down with a huff next to Pauling, carefully turning away as he peeked at his hand, keeping it from her view. “And you already had goddamn gauze for _Pauling_. Great. Thanks a lot, Scout.  Pauling gets the ‘honeys’ and the ‘darlings’ and all that bullshit. I get ‘goddamn moron’ and ‘you idiot’, that sounds about right.””

Pauling gaped at him. “Oh, you too? How did you…? With the knife for that that little wooden thing you were making? Oh, Noah, that was so pretty.”

Noah at least seemed more charitably inclined towards Pauling, which Scout realized was actually a bad sign. Pauling hadn’t done anything worth getting angry about. “Yeah. Well. All bloody now.”

“Oh, no, I’m so sorry. It was that piece of driftwood from the beach, too. I just dropped my knife and tried to catch it like an idiot. Oh, I’m sorry Noah. I’ll...well. I don’t think I want to cut any more apples up, my hand’s stinging like crazy. But I’ve got some shortbread leftover, I’ll make you some cookies.” She glanced up at Scout, who’d just fallen guiltily silent, watching the pair of them. “Do you mind...with the bandage? I can’t really.”

“Oh. Oh, sure, no problem. Lemme get…”

Noah snapped in instead. “I’ll get it.”

 _I fucked up._ Scout opened and closed his hand a few times, slowly, taking a deep breath. Calm down. Damage control. “Hey...Noah. Lemme help. I was wrong. Man, listen, I’m sorry. I was just worried...”

“Yeah, but not about _me_ , so now you can take your shitty damn attitude back to the barn,” Noah grumbled, shot a pained, irritated glare over his shoulder. His bright blue eyes were blazing mad, but there was a tiny spark of pain behind them. “Seriously, Scout, I’m not in the mood for your bullshit. Just fuck off. Talk about my damn temper, at least I can’t _help it_. You go off on me, because I ask you for help _for Pauling_? I don’t get any damn sympathy, all I get is you being an _ass_. So, you know what? No, Scout. We’re fine. You wanna join the club, go open a vein of your own. Lemme tell _you_ about what a fuckin’ moron you are, then we’ll see if we’re even.”

“ _Noah_ ,” Pauling admonished, as he reached over to cradle her palm. She bit her lip and glanced up at Scout, then back and forth between the two of them. “...I think we can manage. I mean...thank you. You know me and blood. I’m okay now, it’s all right. But I think you two both need to calm down a bit…”

Fingers clenched, tight against that secret, red line of reason, threaded across his palm. “I’m calm.”

Pauling frowned a little, her eyes softening. And then, gently, “Well, you weren’t in the kitchen, and I’m still a little shaky, and I really don’t want to deal with fighting. Look, let’s get this all squared away, and we’ll _all_ calm down. Okay? Scout, honey? We’ll just get a little space.”

Another muttered, “yeah, fuck _off_ ” from Noah.

“...Okay. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Pyro, I’m...look, I’m sorry. You’re right, I was bein’ a jackass. Was just...I j-just...fuck. No, forget it. Ain’t no excuse. Can...can I get you guys anything…?”

Noah was holding Pauling’s good hand, possessively. He grunted and shook his head. “We’re fine.”

Pauling gave him a helpless shrug and averted her eyes as Noah started clumsily bandaging her hand. “We’re fine,” she agreed. “We’ll be fine, Scout. Thank you.”

“Welcome,” he answered, a little hollowly. “I’ll...I’m gonna go...finish up. In the barn. Yell if you guys need anything. Uh. And sorry. Again. Just...I’m sorry.”

Scout didn’t stick around to hear whatever else Pyro had to mutter under his breath or feel the way Pauling’s gaze was heavy, disappointed.

There was something, a slight element of punishment, about what he did with razors and peroxide and his goddamned stupid hands. Sometimes he needed to hurt because he was a fucking idiot, who deserved it.

“I’m fine, too,” he murmured to himself, slipping out the front door and back down the path, to the yawning dark mouth of the barn’s open door. “We’re all fine.”

 


	94. crab apples

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger Warning:** discovery of/reaction to self-harm (cutting).

Scout was edgy about some things. Lots of things. More things than Miss Pauling would ever really understand, and she tried to be okay with that. It had been three years; a lot of the things had faded. That was good—that was wonderful.

She kind of hadn’t expected him to develop new ones, though. One of the first things they’d done in the farmhouse, one of the first times Pauling had felt like maybe this strange scrawny creature she’d invited into her house could be human again, was when she asked Scout if he knew how to make cookies. It had been an offhanded comment, a conversation-starter, but Scout had perked up. Sure he knew how to make cookies, he and his mother had done it all the time back home. What kind of cookies?

Just sugar cookies, Pauling had said, and all of sudden they were in the kitchen together, rolling out little balls of dough. She had one of those distinct-but-unimportant memories of him expertly unwinding the wraps on his hands and stowing them in his pockets.

She’d been making those same cookies the other day, now three, nearly four years later. The memory had come to mind, of course it had, but for the first time it occurred to her that she had never since seen Scout without the hand wraps. He didn’t take them off for anything—not yardwork, not cooking, not even sex.

How strange, she thought to herself. Just for a second, as she looked down at the little round balls of dough. And then Noah came sauntering in and distracted her terribly, leaning over her the way he couldn’t do with Scout, biting her ear and saying _things_. His hands wandered. The cookies were very quickly forgotten.

Scout had been out in the barn all day. In one of his moods, Noah said, so he’d had to look elsewhere to sate his boredom. He told Pauling all of this after they’d worn one another out right there in the kitchen. Exhausted and smarting and with her face buried in Noah’s neck, with Noah’s arms wrapped around her, she said: “Have you ever seen Scout without those hand wraps?”

He blinked at her. “Sure. I’ve helped him put them on a few times. Why?”

“Recently, though? I was just thinking about it, before you came in. I’ve only seen him take them off once, right after we moved in.”

Noah opened his mouth as if to answer. Paused. Shut it again, looking confused. “… No, I guess I haven’t. Not since RED.” He hesitated. “Does it matter?”

“It just seems a little weird.”

“Mmm.”

But that was all that came of it. Pauling put it out of her mind, and Noah got sidetracked, and neither of them ever thought (nor found the right moment) to ask Scout about it.

And then, early in November.

It had been one of those slow, crisp autumn nights, falling soft after a wonderful day. They’d picked crab apples all afternoon for a jam Scout wanted to make, and the temperature had been perfect. Noah’s flirting had been disgustingly on-point. By the time they’d gone to bed, he had spirited a laughing, red-faced Scout away with him. Pauling, sap-sticky and tired, had been content to eavesdrop on what she could hear of them from the bath.

Trying to find a place on their ridiculous mattress set-up _after_ the boys had been going at it was invariably an exercise in navigating limbs and wet spots. Pauling retired to the nice, broad couch in the den. She was not expecting to be woken up an hour or so later by Scout, saying he felt bad they’d ditched her. They fell asleep on the couch shortly after, curled into one another.

Scout could sleep anywhere and through anything, these days. Pauling, on the other hand, was lucky if she got a full night’s sleep in her own bed. She woke easily. The next morning she woke to a particularly loud jay screaming by the window, just after dawn.

With a sigh and a yawn, she sat up; looked at Scout flat unconscious behind her. And of course her eyes fell on his hands, and their omnipresent wraps. Curiosity took root. Scout barely stirred when she carefully started unbinding the cotton.

Pauling hadn’t known what she’d expected to find. Nothing, quite possibly, or maybe something a little off-putting like a rash. Maybe he drew on his hands and didn’t like to show it.

She was not expecting to unfurl the wrappings and find a field of wounds. Sharp, careful wounds, all straight lines running parallel with his veins and following the creases in his palm. Old silver ones, ones of angry crimson. Scars and scars in the making.

Pauling was altogether too clever to not recognize them for what they were, what they meant, immediately. And perhaps it was foolish of her to stagger upright and run for Noah, instead of putting the cotton back in its place and waiting for a better opportunity.

But run she did. She didn’t even know what to say when she shook Noah awake, except, “Please, it’s Scout, it’s his hands.”

Noah had blinked at her, stupid with sleep, but it was amazing how instantly that vanished when she showed him what she had found.

 

* * *

 

Before RED, before Scout, before he had been given the name Pyro, Noah had shacked up with a young woman named Vivian. Vivian had been gorgeous and athletic and a valedictorian, and she thought the way Noah’s accent only came out when he was drunk was cute. They had met in a bar; she had taken him home. Noah had had the sense not to ask her about the swarm of straight silver-and-red lines that marred her thighs. You didn’t ask about things like that when you were living the way Noah was. Questions got you kicked out.

Later he would wonder if anyone else, anyone important to her, had ever found out about those scars, and if they had felt the same way he did when he laid eyes on Scout’s wrists.

He’d frozen up, was what he’d done. He’d stared at Scout’s wrists and then at Scout’s face, peaceful in sleep, and then he’d shouldered Pauling aside to grab Scout’s other hand and tear the bindings off it, too. He was rough. Scout woke up in the middle of it. “Wh … mmh. Pyro? What’re—”

“What is this?” Noah snapped, practically shoving Scout’s own arm in his face. “What the _fuck_ is this?”

Scout stared at him.

Scout stared at him, and looked down at his bare hand, and ripped it out of the vise of Noah’s grip. The look on his face was all too familiar. Noah had seen it too many times near the end of their stay at RED, the one that said _but I trusted you._

Silent, he snatched up the hand wraps. Made as if to put them back on. Noah made a sound not unlike an animal, grabbing at them, and Scout hit him. A sharp, efficient right hook against the chin that threw him back a pace. Pauling said something, but Noah didn’t hear it. “What’re, what’re you _fucking doing_ ,” Scout was saying, “what the _fuck_ , P-Pyro—”

“What’ve you been doing to your fucking hands?! What’ve, are you—”

“It’s none’a your goddamn business what I been doin’ or ain’t been doin’, is it, you fucking _son_ of a _bitch_ , you _don’t pull this kind of shit_ with me, so help me _God_ —”

Noah had opened his mouth, but Pauling put herself between them before he could speak, on her knees, her hands on Scout’s leg. “Scout, stop it, stop it _please,_ it wasn’t Noah. I took them off your hands, it’s my fault. Sweetheart—”

For a split second Noah was convinced Scout would hit her, too. He was tensed and coiled the way he was before a bad fight, face flush, knuckles white around the uncoiled cotton. But instead he just stood up, shoving past Noah. Noah snarled and grabbed his shoulder. “ _Scout_ —”

“ _What?_ ” The word went off like a bomb. “ _What_ the _fuck_ do you want me to say, what does it frickin’ _look_ like I’ve been doin‘, man? Are you so fuckin’ stupid I gotta spell this out for you, I know you are _real fuckin’ dumb_ sometimes, _both of you_ , I c, I cannot fuckin’—no, I _can_ believe it, on account’a _damn_ it’s almost like you two both’ve shot me up fulla drugs before ‘cuz you decided I clearly don’t fuckin’ know how to handle myself—”

“Because you _fucking don’t_ , sometimes, Scout, how are we supposed to tr, trust you when you do s-shit like this—”

“ _‘Scuse me?_ Ex-scuse me, this ain’t fucking about you, either of ya, why would I fuckin’ waste my fuckin’ blood on _you_ anyway?” Scout’s voice had gone raw and wavering, high-pitched. A hundred thousand words were spilling over into Noah’s throat but his jaw was locking, his attempts to speak were twisting themselves into sputters and stilted syllables. Behind him he could feel Pauling, on her feet now, her hand twisted into the back of his shirt. Scout sneered. “ _Fuck_ you. Fuck _both_ of you, god _damn_ you, I’m not your fuckin’ _kid_ an’ you don’t get to _tell me what to do!_ ”

“Scout, please,” Pauling said, and it was faint and afraid.

Scout stared at her for a long few seconds before turning and leaving the room.

 

* * *

 

Noah had fallen mute. Pauling supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised, with Scout’s outburst. After Scout left, Noah had sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands.

What the hell was she supposed to do? Go after Scout, in the state he was in? Oh, God. She was genuinely afraid he might hurt her, angry as he was, _justifiably_ angry, at _her._ She'd seen what Scout was capable of, had given him citations for it on the team. Oh, God. Oh, fuck.

So instead she sat with Noah, holding his hands, her forehead pressed against his shoulder. He barely seemed to notice. After a while he started to speak again. Almost. “Should’ve. Fuck. Ff, _fuck._ Should’ve _known_. I should’ve. Stupid. Ob–obv-i-ous, _God._ ”

He continued this for another fifteen minutes, a long string of repeated words and curses and not registering anything Pauling said or did. But finally she got him to look at her. The light had gone out of him. And Noah was tragically beautiful, but everyone is ugly when they cry.

 

* * *

 

“We have to talk to him,” Pauling said, quietly, after Noah had, for the present, dried his eyes. She suspected it was only a temporary dam. “I mean. We can’t—we can’t let him—”

“Of course we can’t,” Noah mumbled. “Oh my God. I … I don’t know what to do. I wish you hadn’t told him you’d done it. And then I—I blew up in his face, of _course_ I did, all I know how to do is get angry—”

“Don’t.”

Noah stopped, eyes squeezing shut. “… okay. Okay. Oh, fuck. Okay. I hope he didn’t—do you know where he went?”

She did not, but there were only so many places he could go. He was not in the kitchen nor the dining room, nor bedroom, nor the porch. And he was not in the barn, though other things were. Straight razors lying openly on a hay bale streaked with red. Apparently he wasn’t trying to hide it anymore. The sight had made Noah go paler, a thing Pauling hadn’t been sure was possible.

They found him in the crab apple trees, where they’d had such a wonderful evening the night before. He was dangerously high up an old white oak growing among them, bloody handprints on the branches, and sat curled in a fork. It was cold, and he had no coat, and Pauling hoped that was the only reason he looked like he was shaking. Noah took point. “… Scout?”

He did not look at them. “ _What._ ”

“I … please come down?”

“Why, so y’can fuckin’ yell at me some more?” Scout snapped. Now he looked down, a mockery of his grin drawing itself across his face. He held up his palm: bare, covered in grit and dried blood. “Got your _fuckin’_ reason right here.”

Beside her, Pauling felt Noah go tense. Seize up. She picked up where he had to stop. “No, please, no more yelling. He’s sorry. We’re both sorry, you’re right to be angry. Please come down.”

“Fuck you.”

Venom laced the words. Pauling fell silent. For few seconds that was all there was, the silence. Then Noah squeezed her hand and stepped forward. He moved to the base of the tree, and Scout made a sound like a feral animal. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fuckin’ dare come up after me, Pyro, I’ll jump, I’ll fuckin’ snap my neck from this height, don’t you think I won’t.”

“I’m not,” Noah said, “I’m not, I won’t, I promise.”

“’Cuz your promises mean a whole fuck of a lot.”

Pauling did not see the hurt flash in his face, but she could read it in how he hunched in on himself. In how he backed away from the tree. “I’m sorry,” he said, and it was weak. “I—you’re right. You’re right. Is … please talk to me, Scout, to us. I don’t … I don’t understand.”

Scout laughed, a dark and joyless sound. “Of course you don’t.” Noah tilted his head back up at him again. Pauling dared to draw nearer. “An’ you ain’t ever gonna, don’t bother on tryin’.”

“I, but. I just. _Why_?” Noah swallowed. “Is it my fault? I, I know I’m an asshole, I’m sorry, I—if I’d known—”

“I _said_ it ain’t about you.”

“Then what?” Pauling asked, feeling tiny and intrusive. “Please, all we want to do is help.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t’a gone fuckin’ snoopin’ in my business, yeah? What the fuck, Miss Pauling?”

This wasn’t working.

Gingerly, she took Noah by the hand. “… Okay,” she said at last. “We’ll go back inside, we’ll wait for you. Just … whenever you’re ready. To come back. We’ll be there.”

“But,” Noah started, under his breath, shutting up when she elbowed him. He swallowed, then nodded, looking back up at Scout. “… I love you,” he offered weakly. “We love you.”

Scout glared down at them for a few seconds longer before turning away again.


	95. osmosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> directly follows crab apples

_Don’t do anything you can’t take back._ That had been some advice. Good advice, from someone who Scout believed would know what they were talking about.

Scout had really never been great with advice.

_Don’t do anything like throwing yourself out of a tree, or like rubbing your forearms to make your hands bleed more, don’t get hypothermia in a goddamn stupid fucking tree in the middle of nowhere in stupid fucking Oregon, because you are a stupid fucking moron._

It could have been such a _nice day_ , too. Crab apple jelly. Crab apple jelly was _basically_ amazing, and Scout hadn’t had it in years. Not since the lady who’d lived next door had used to give his mother a few jars at Christmas. These were always hotly contested among his brothers, and gone by New Year’s.

But, Pauling with her goddamn nosiness and Noah with his stupid shouting and Scout had been stuck up in a tree, fuming, for over an hour now. For the past ten minutes it had been raining. This had quite literally dampened his ability to be properly angry, which was grossly unfair, because he still _was_. This was the worst day ever. How the hell Pyro managed to get so fucking mad, madder than _this_ even. For _hours_ , sometimes. And yelling and raging and throwing shit, it was _exhausting_. Pyro, admittedly, usually hadn’t let a pint or so of blood out of his hands, with clumsy, spiteful gashes, the sort that were now raw and wet and stinging with grit. And Pyro usually had the sense to get angry indoors.

This was almost worse than the long, blurred together day when he’d broken his arm and torn open his hand that first time and then been fully intent on shooting himself in the barn, only today he wasn’t drunk and he didn’t actually want to die. This made it a lot more difficult to justify being twenty feet off the ground with bleeding hands and an empty stomach and no one to talk him out of it.

Well. They _had_ tried, though.

Scout could see the house, the driveway. So he was watching when the truck rolled slowly backward, out of the garage, and then made the turn to continue up to the highway.

They had said they would wait. He had heard that, he hadn’t imagined it. He’d never been able to clearly remember what had happened between him and Pauling in the barn, only that it had ended with crying and hugging and apologies. This time his memory was completely clear, sharpened the way it always was, by the adrenal rush that went with pain. And he could hear the rattle of the loose exhaust pipe, fading as the truck passed beyond the limit of what he could catch the sound of. They’d...fuck. Oh fuck.

All they'd wanted to know was why.

And he didn’t know how to tell them, because if he was completely honest, for all that it made sense as a part of his fucked up method for navigating his life after that Badlands, he didn’t really know himself.

Maybe they were only trying to give him space. Maybe they didn’t think he’d come down unless they were gone. Maybe that was the excuse he needed. Probably, even. Scout was already trying to stretch out, cramped and aching from being perched in an oak tree for too damn long. Probably it was good that they’d left. He could talk himself into believing that, for the span of time it took to get on the ground.

Maybe he could get on the ground without breaking his fucking neck, between the rain and the pain in his hands and the fact that he’d been shivering the entire time. Shit, he probably deserved to fall and break his fucking neck.

It only marginally improved his morning that he managed to get out of the tree without breaking anything. It was a near thing, though, the bark was damp and his hands were numb by the time he crumpled to his knees on the ground. The pain in his leg was just pain, the way it always was, and didn’t help anything at all. There was deep, thick grass all around the foot of the tree. It was soft and even if it was cold and damp, for a little while he didn’t want to get up.. It was still bent and crushed from where Pauling and Pyro had been standing, looking up.

Gone, now, though. That was probably still fine. They would come back. Scout had the house to himself, that was okay, probably. He hadn’t done anything stupid like throw himself out of a tree, he wasn’t going to do anything stupid like stick his head in the oven.

He shivered bodily and started the long, limping walk back to the house.

\------

She’d been curled up on the windowseat in her bedroom, sobbing. Noah had wanted to be left alone, silent again, but obviously blaming himself. It was a flaw of Noah’s that he never told Scout the way he was feeling. Somehow he always seemed to deflect it onto Pauling. Pauling knew intimately about every facet of Noah’s love and lust, his frustration and contempt, and his grief and deep, abiding empathy for his partner, their partner. She knew what feelings they both shared. She knew that he never seemed to manage to tell Scout any of this. It was a flaw of Noah’s.

When the truck had roared to life in the garage, she hadn’t lifted her head. Scout. She couldn’t bring herself to get up, to go after him, stop him from leaving. She didn’t know where he would go. Noah had left. She’d never known where Noah had gone.  When things had gotten bad between Noah and Scout, Noah had known when he needed to take time away. Sometimes their little triad was crowded. And in the end, Noah had come back, and things had gotten better. It had been the best thing that could have happened, it had left her and Scout with enough room to sort of patch each other up, start healing.

Pauling sniffled and pushed herself up, wiping at her eyes. Her and Noah, then. Their turn. Maybe she could start to share some of the grief, some of the blame, because she’d made a mistake and knew it. She loved Noah, because that had been easy. First it had just been sex, with Noah, and then that had bled into a sort of fond, muddled up affection that was probably near enough to love that it counted. Noah, even with his anything-goes sexuality and his laundry list of issues, still managed to be fairly uncomplicated. And she could handle Noah. Even with the fits of rage and depression and flighty emotionality, she could handle Noah.

Scout, though.

Pauling had never really stopped being a little afraid of Scout. Scout had a hold of her the way no one else ever had, and that was what was frightening. A year ago, late August, she’d crossed a threshold with him, and she’d been lost in the dark and tangled mess on the inside ever since. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way that deprived her of the control she liked to have in her life. It had been raw and terrifying to admit she loved Scout, because he just needed her. He needed Noah, too, and she’d never managed to ask Noah just how he dealt with it. She’d always just tried to do her best, be whatever he needed. It wasn’t hard to be the person who did what was needed. It was hard to _be_ the person that was needed.

It was harder to know he was mad at her. Really, properly mad. Not like the way Noah got, she wasn’t scared of Noah. Noah was big, but when Noah was mad he was _dumb_. He was clumsy and brutal and easy to avoid, because she was small and quick and she knew how to drug him. Once she’d learned how to handle him, she’d stopped being at all afraid of Noah.

Scout was a different story.

Scout was a foot taller than she was, and had a longer reach than Noah. Scout outweighed her by about fifty pounds. He was faster than she was, and easily stronger, and he knew all the tricks she used on Noah. He knew not to let her stick him with a syringe, and he knew she didn’t have anything else. She didn’t know if he remembered all the citations she’d had to give him, towards the end of his time at RED. She didn’t know if he even knew how horrifically cruel he’d gotten towards the end. Noah was a brute, but somewhere deep inside, Scout was a fiend.

She felt sick to know she had failed him, to know he’d been tormented to the point that he’d take a razorblade to himself rather than try and let her or Noah in. Maybe whatever had driven him to that point, to that same level of senseless injury, maybe that had always been what she was _really_ afraid of.

Maybe Scout needed to go away for a while. That was fine. Her truck...well. She’d been meaning to look at getting another one, anyway, to check out the classifieds in the local newspaper. She would need to shuffle her budget around somewhat, but she could probably afford a new truck.

She wanted Noah, now. That was something she could talk about with Noah, something to occupy the both of them, until Scout got back. He would come back, of course he would. There wasn’t anywhere he would _go_ , and she had firmly decided not to think about the possibility that that was the whole point. Scout was better. This was just a bump in the road, nothing they couldn’t get through together, like everything else. He was an adult. He would be fine. When he came back, everything would be calmed down and they could talk about it. It would be fine.

Pauling got up, changed clothes. Something soft and feminine and pretty, something Noah had picked out for her. That would cheer him up. She went to wash her face, brush her hair. And she couldn’t cook, not like Scout could, but they both needed breakfast, and she made decent pancakes. Noah got sad, but you could usually lure him out of funk with anything that needed copious amounts of syrup. And she was hungry too. She even felt a little bit better, as she made her way down the stairs.

\------

Noah hated Pauling’s truck. It was a profound, abiding sort of hate, too. He hated it just about as much as she loved it, because it was _ugly_ and it was decrepit and it had pretty much nearly gotten her killed their second Christmas, when she’d gotten pneumonia and it had broken down in the middle of a blizzard. It had reached the point where he refused to drive it unless he absolutely had to. Scout gave him no end of shit about this. Pauling got overprotective and haughty. But Noah hated the damn thing

But he had to _do_ something, and a vivid, half formed plan had sprung into his head, curled up in bed, the sheets still tangled from the night previous. It had been a galvanizing sort of plan, and Noah had wanted to get on with it immediately. So he had hauled on a pair of jeans, only spent five minutes hemming and hawing over which shirt suited his mood. Then he’d crept out of the house, guiltily sneaking past the sounds of Pauling sobbing through her bedroom door, plucked the keys off the rack in the front hallway, and absconded with the truck. Probably Pauling wouldn’t mind.

He was going to be a few hours. That was all right, probably Scout wasn’t going to be holed up in a tree for much longer, and probably he wouldn’t want to see Noah anyway. Noah had made a terrible mistake, and more desperately than anything else, he wanted to fix it.

 _This isn’t our fault_.

Pauling had said it, once they’d gotten back to the house, trying to be comforting. She hadn’t just been placating him, either, she’d gotten insistent, venting the anger that she didn’t ever seem able to vent at Scout. Pauling and Scout had only ever had one really bad fight in time the three of them had been together, and Scout had started it. Noah and Pauling got into it on the regular, they both had a streak that liked to argue, and they both could argue about almost anything. It was honestly one of his favourite things about her, that she would plant her little feet and fold her arms and shout right back at him. It was never about anything _personal_ , not really. And it let them both get it out of their systems. Like a valve that took the pressure off.

With Scout, she was all sweetness and light, all kindness and kid gloves. Sweetheart and darling and dearest came out when Scout was around. Noah got beast and brute and animal and monster, and at first he had really _hated it_ , but he’d grown to understand that Pauling demonstrated affection by calling a spade a spade. And Scout was absolutely a sweetheart, just as much as Noah was a brute and a monster. But he and Scout had been together so long, and a little bit of the sweetness bled out of Scout and into Noah. So too had had a little bit of the monster gone the other way, osmosis. Noah was starting to think this was maybe a problem with Pauling, that she never really let Scout know when she was mad at him. He _did_ make her mad, Noah knew that beyond a doubt, because he was the one who always seemed to hear about it.

He had a long drive in which to think about it. He was going to need to comb the city for what he was looking for, but hopefully, he could find what he needed. Hopefully he could also manage to find it without the power of speech because he’d gotten really upset, and he couldn’t seem to make his voice work at the moment. Well. The part of town he was going to, odds were he was going to need to get by on the strength of his ability to mime anyway.


	96. harm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> directly follows osmosis

She’d frozen on the staircase, her heart in her throat. She hadn’t heard Noah leave. She hadn’t heard the front door open. She wasn’t expecting Scout, soaking wet and shivering a little, glaring up at her from the foot of the stairs. “...sorry,” she managed, taking a careful step backwards. “I thought you were N-Noah. I guess he left. I...oh. Okay. I’m sorry, Scout. I’ll go back upstairs...do you...there’s laundry in the dryer, but I think it’s all m-mine. You’re still in your pajamas and it’s pouring out, you must be freezing. Can I...I’ll throw down a change of clothes. Okay?”

“The hell’s gotten into you? Where’s Pyro gone?” Suspicious, still angry enough that she was wary, looking at him with an awkward mix of trepidation and concern. “...why’re _you_ still here?”

Pauling paused, hesitantly sat down on the stairs. She’d gotten dressed at some point, changed out of her pajamas, into a loose grey tunic and jeans. Her hair was pulled up into a loose french twist at the nape of her neck and she’d been crying. A _lot_ , by the way her eyes were still puffy and the tip of her nose was red. "I don't know where he is. I don’t know why Noah left, he didn’t tell me he was going. I guess...he’d lost his voice again, he was really upset. I know you’re mad, you’re right to be mad. Scout, I don’t know what to _do_ with you. Neither of us do. I can’t... Scout, I can’t handle you when you’re mad. Noah’s not here, and you scare the hell out of me. So I’m just going to stay away. Okay?”

He was staring at her, bewildered. “...what... Jesus. Fuck, Miss Pauling, I wouldn’t...I’m not gonna _hurt_ you.”

“You punched Noah in the face. You _really_ looked like you were going to hit me. I don’t blame you for wanting to, I did something terrible and I’m really sorry.” She bit her lip and her eyes darted to his hands, still unwrapped, scarred all to hell. Irritably he crammed them in his pockets, glared at her. “And...you don’t need me to tell you, Scout, you _know_ what that looks like, or you wouldn’t have hidden it. It’s horrifying that you’d do that to yourself. I don’t know if I can feel safe talking to you about this. Not without Noah here, at least."

Scout scowled, and then defensively. “ _Noah’s_ the one who hurts you. Noah nearly burnt the goddamn barn down, you remember that? Fuckin’ Pyro, he’s crazier than me. With his goddamn temper tantrums, you tellin’ me you ain’t scared of Pyro?. He’s the one who goes outta his fuckin’ mind, flips tables an’ breaks stuff. I’ve _never_ done any of that shit. Like to see _you_ deal with him, next time he loses his shit at you. I’m always punchin’ Pyro in the face, plenty of times he needs a good--” he stopped. He’d gotten off track, ranting at her. He took a deep breath. “An’ what the hell, anyway? The shit you two do, y’wanna talk about horrifyin’? He _chokes you_ . You ain’t got any right tellin’ me off. _You_ do plenty worse to him, I seen all kindsa--”

She shook her head. “No, that’s different. That’s...I don’t _harm_ him. I hurt him. And he does the same to me. We have rules. There’s a difference. I know it’s hard to understand, and God knows I’ve tried to explain, but it’s not _dangerous_ , what he and I do.”

“This ain’t either.”

Biting her lip now, her eyes tired and teary again. She didn’t seem to want to look at him. “Okay.”

Her tone had only been neutral, but he’d been ready to argue with her about it, like he knew he would have with Pyro. He and Miss Pauling _never_ fought, but he got into it with Pyro all the time. So did she. He’d seen her flare up in anger before, at Pyro. Pyro just brought it out in people, fits of temper. “Don’t you fuckin’ patronize me, I can’t stand it. You an’ _Noah_ , always talkin’ down to me about your shit, it ain’t...I’m not a goddamn idiot, and--”

“Scout, _please_. I don’t want to fight about this.” She got up again, retreated further up the stairs. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, I--I’m going to leave you alone. Stop yelling. Okay? I love you.”

Pauling vanished into the upstairs hallway. A minute or two later, a change of clothes landed at the foot of the stairs in a heap. Then there was the soft sound of her bedroom door, closing.

Scout really wished he was still angry, but it was hard to be, gathering up a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and his favourite sweater.

\------

It was two hours later when Scout realized she probably hadn’t eaten. He’d been in the kitchen the entire time, washing, slicing, and dropping crab apples into the biggest pot they had. They didn’t need to be sliced, particularly, but it gave him something to do with his hands, focused his mind. He’d disinfected the hell out of them, fully deserving the agony of it, and rewrapped them, pretending he wasn’t ashamed.

He stopped with the apples, made a sandwich. Thought about it briefly, then made a second one. Brought them both upstairs, knocked on the door of Miss Pauling’s room, hung back, waiting for her to open it. Wasn’t sure if he should smile when she did, settled for looking away, awkwardly. “Uh. Hey. Thought maybe you were hungry?”

She only nodded, accepted the plate he held out. “Thank you.”

Scout lingered, guilt gnawing at him, the way she kept a hand on the door handle, looked ready to slam it in his face if he made any sudden moves. “...you...could you come downstairs? I didn’t wanna scare you, you ain’t gotta be scared of me. I didn’t mean, didn’t wanna get mad like that. Okay? I ain’t mad now. I mean...fuck, no, I’m still mad as hell, but not like I was. I won’t yell at you anymore, I promise. Just...please don’t be scared. Makes me feel like shit, Miss Pauling, I wouldn’t _ever_ hurt you.”

Pauling hesitated, but pulled the door open and slipped out into the hallway. She seemed at a loss for words, but went downstairs and sat down in the dining room. She was halfway through her sandwich by the time Scout joined her, he slid the second one across the table. “Cup of tea?” he offered.

“Is that what I smell?”

Scout glanced over his shoulder. “Oh...nah. That’s just apples, from yesterday? I just needed somethin’ to do. Do...d’you wanna help? I mean, there ain’t much to it, but...well. Could talk, if you wanna. Y’don’t have to, I just...Miss Pauling. I’d maybe feel better if you’d really just give me hell. C’mon, I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Pyro’s different, he can...I mean, he’s mad half the time anyway, he’s a mean bastard. You, though, you ain’t…”

“Pyro’s not any different. I know exactly how he feels. We’re just dealing with it differently. I wish he hadn’t left, I wanted to talk to him.” Miss Pauling didn’t look like she planned to touch the rest of her sandwich, she’d just laid her hands on the tabletop, staring at the chipping paint on her nails. “I don’t want to yell at you.”

Scout pulled up the chair next to her, reached for her hand. Forgot that she had a reason to recoil as his fingers brushed hers. Drew back, just sat with his hands in his lap instead, awkward. “Just talk, then. Me ‘n you, we used to talk all the time. Right? Was how we really got together, sometimes you’re just better for talkin’ than Pyro is.”

She just sighed and rested her head on her arms, hid her face and muffled her voice. “I wish I hadn’t done it. And I wish I hadn’t told Noah. Oh, I hope he comes back, I’m worried about him. He was so upset, and I’ve never been good when he stops talking, that was always y-your...you always know how to handle that better than me.”

“...Pyro’s real tough, he’ll be okay."

“I wish I hadn’t been so damn nosy, it was stupid and selfish and now--now. Oh, god, Scout. How can things be the same, now?”

Pauling sniffled and he patted her hair, gently. “It ain’t...Miss Pauling, c’mon. It ain’t a big deal, y’don’t need t’go an’ get upset like this. It’s just something I do, it doesn’t hurt anything, honest. I...I don’t know why. I couldn’t ever work out the reason, just...it’s like...y’know ‘bout how I’m kinda screwed up, how things’ll eat at me sometimes. It just helps. Makes things clearer, stuff makes more sense. I dunno why, I know it ain’t good. But I’m real careful. Ain’t doin’ any harm.”

“How long?”

He told her.

And, “But are you careful, though?”

Well, of course, he was practically pathological about it. He didn’t tell her exactly why. Questions lead into more questions. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.

Was this why she sometimes caught him pressing his fingertips into his palms, when he was stressed? Why had he started wrapping his hands in the first place? Didn’t he think they would notice? What about how they felt, how of course they would blame themselves? And after what had happened after he’d broken his arm, was it any wonder why something like this would be frightening? Could she see, really see? She hadn’t gotten a good look, maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. Oh, but it was and it broke her heart and set her sobbing. She’d used to just adore his hands. Why not let her help? Why not the sort of thing she did, why did it have to be cutting, if it was about pain?

Would he stop?

 _Could_ he stop?

By the time she’d run out of questions, they were hung up on that last one. They’d moved through the kitchen, boiled the rest of the apples down, the pulp was straining overnight, to be jellied and canned the next morning. Cleaned up the kitchen. Curled up together on the couch, the way they had been that morning, before everything had gone sideways. Scout shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t think...no. Not if I didn’t have to, it just, it helps. You got no idea how long I been lookin’ for something that _helps_.”

She just sighed sadly, and buried her face against his collarbone. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Please, don’t be, it ain’t anything t’do with you, not you an’ not Pyro neither. It’s just me. There’s just some screwed up part of my brain that thinks I can get all the stuff that’s fucked up about me _out,_ if I open a place for it to bleed from. It’s just a thing’s true about me, an’ it’s okay.”

Miss Pauling shook her head. “No. There’s more than that, you didn’t need to be this way. I wish...I never told you this. I should have. I don’t know if it does any good, but back...in the Badlands, I used to wish--augh. It sounds so stupid. Some days my job was really hard. It was always really lonely. I liked it and I was good at it, but it was _hard._ I bought this place so I’d have somewhere to run to, when it was all over. I always sort of wanted to take you with me. I barely knew you, but I always thought you were cute, and you were nice. It was just a crush, it was silly. But this was before I knew about...what it did to you. Working for RED. God, Scout. I never should have let you do that goddamn job. I remember when you were hired, I remember the interview. I remember thinking you weren’t cut out for it, but I’d only just barely been hired myself, I couldn’t say anything. I just...if I’d known then what I know now. Things could have been different for you, and it’s times like these when I wish they had been. I love you, but Noah said once; that I love you broken. I guess I do. I just wish I’d known enough to love you before then. Maybe it’s stupid to believe I could have made a difference.”

Scout didn’t have anything he could say about that, and for a long time after that they were just holding each other in silence, until the truck rattled up the driveway, and came to a stop.


	97. in love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> directly follows harm

When Noah walked in, expressionless and his eyes still violently red and puffy, Scout held his breath. Like that would keep Pyro from looking up. It didn’t, of course it didn’t, and they would up staring straight at each other for a long five seconds. Pyro looked away first. He cleared his throat. “Um,” he started. “I, uh. Is … this a bad time?”

It wasn’t the tone of voice Scout had gotten used to, from him. It was reluctant, nervous. Not Pyro at all. And Scout forgot to answer, suddenly very aware of his hands. Miss Pauling answered instead. “I … maybe? Scout? Should I go?”

“What? Uh.” Scout swallowed and looked at Pyro again. Pyro lifted one hand, raising a big paper bag Scout hadn’t noticed before, and tried to smile.

“I, um, I got you something.”

 

* * *

 

Pyro took him out to the porch, saying whatever was in the bag could make a mess. It had stopped raining. He sat Scout down on the porch swing and went back inside for a few minutes, and when he returned he was carrying a clear plastic bag of something that looked like it was from a bakery. “Chocolate frosting…?”

“Not quite,” Pyro said, sitting down next to him. Then he fell silent again, looking at a loss. Gingerly, he reached out and touched the fingers of Scout’s left hand, looking up at him as if for permission. Scout let him take it, though it sent a wave of unease rushing through him. “… I need to take this off to do this,” Pyro said carefully, brushing the edge of his hand wrap. “Is that—can I … ?”

“… Fine.” It was hard to keep the stiffness out of his voice. If Pyro picked up on it, he did not react. Instead he just gently, slowly began to unwind the cotton. He was delicate and took his time, and the act felt terribly intimate. It made Scout feel vulnerable, small. Scout had longer fingers, but Pyro’s hands were bigger overall. “What are you doing?”

“It’s called henna.”

The wraps were full off now, and with grit teeth Scout waited for Pyro to comment on the bright gashes in his palms. It never came, though. Instead he just took Scout’s hand in his own palm, cradling it, and touched the tip of the bag to his skin.

A thin, dark line. He traced the tip in an elegant whorl on Scout’s index finger, and did the same on the other three before switching to the thumb and starting something new there. It was tiny, and tickled. Scout watched in silence as he kept on with it, putting tiny, complex patterns all over his fingers. And eventually Pyro said, “I had a friend in college that used to do this, she showed me. Um. She didn’t … do what you do, but she picked at her skin all the time otherwise. Pulled her hair out. She said it helped her, so I thought …” He trailed off. “Maybe it’s stupid.”

“It … no, I mean, keep—keep goin’.” Pyro looked at him, eyes still red. “Please?”

“I … yeah. Of course.”

Off he went. The tip of the henna bag was impossibly tiny, and Pyro worked slowly, shaping a dreamlike landscape of lines and dots and curls over Scout’s callouses and scars. He stayed clear of the raw cuts, leaving them in delicate enclosed spaces, little islands of pain. And eventually he said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“Yeah, well. ’M sorry I punched you. You deserved it but still.”

Pyro smiled. “Yeah, I did.” And that was all for another few minutes. Scout had been waiting for all the same questions Miss Pauling had asked him, but they never came. Instead, finally, Pyro said, “I still have a hard time figuring out how I turned into someone whose first reaction is to yell. I didn’t—I mean, you know. I used to be different.”

Well. He couldn’t argue that. Scout tried to shrug without moving his arm. “So’d I.”

“We’re fucked up, huh.”

“Just a little.” He hesitated, a question forcing its way up his throat. “Do … d’you, uh. Our first rule, you remember that?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that, I mean, like. Is that still a rule?” Pyro’s eyes cut up to him, and they were heavy. Sad. Scout swallowed, but the question stayed. “You still love me?”

“I love you,” Pyro said, drawing a tight, tiny spiral on the base of Scout’s thumb. “… I love you, I’ll always love you, but I … I don’t think I’m _in_ love with you. I want to be, but …”

Scout’s mouth had gone dry very suddenly. “… so what’s … what’s that mean?”

Slowly, wearily, Pyro laughed. “Do you know how hard it is to kill someone you’re in love with?”

…oh. Oh.

Before Scout could answer, Pyro shook his head, carrying on with his drawing. “I had … it was _hell_ for me, too, Scout. On RED, taking care of you. I never told you. Sometimes I hated you, I … I never asked you to take that bullet for me,” he said softly, carefully wrapping his fingers around Scout’s wrist. “I _wish_ you hadn’t, I wish you’d just let Medic at me instead. But I had to watch you suffer because of me for years. I had to kill you so many times. I have nightmares about it all the time, still. I almost killed you when you broke your arm because it was the only thing I knew how to do.” He shook his head and took a huge, shaky breath. “It turned me into a monster. I used to fantasize about killing you for good just so Medic couldn’t hurt you anymore. I’m scared to be away from you because you’re the only one who knows how to handle me when I snap, I’m scared to be around you because I’m worried I’ll kill you again … it’s, it’s so damn complicated. I had to stop being in love with you because it was killing me, I had to distance myself and I did but then I forgot how to come back. But I—I miss it, I miss you.” His fingers dug into Scout’s scarred skin. “Shit. Oh, God. I miss what we had in the beginning. I _know_ we can’t get that back but I …”

He broke off with a shattered sort of noise. Scout kept very still, letting the words wash over him. Before he could speak Pyro shook himself, brushed some hair out of his eyes. “… I talk about you to Pauling like I’ve got just the worst crush on you,” he said with a faint smile. “It’s horrible. You’d make fun of me.”

“Pyro…”

“No, shh. Shit. I made this about me again,” he mumbled, bending over Scout’s hand and getting back to work. “ _You’re_ the one so bad off you’re cutting yourself and I’m whining.”

Scout fell silent, and watched Pyro work his way down his palm. Just as he was about to hit Scout’s wrist, Scout said, “So, I mean… um. Is there, like, I mean. What do I gotta … is there even anything I can do t’help with that? The, the bein’ in love part.”

“I don’t know. I hope there is. I really want there to be.” He sighed. “And I should probably try harder. I know I’m a jackass, now, I know it doesn’t help things, it’s not an excuse.”

Words failed him. Eventually Scout just leaned forward and rested his forehead against Pyro's, his other hand catching hold of Pyro’s left wrist.

Time passed. Pyro finished, and then offered the henna bag to Scout. “You try it, now. And keep that. I’ll show you how to make more. Just … maybe try it, next time, first? Instead of the other thing? … Please?”

“I will,” Scout promised.

(Their problems could not be solved in a day. But that night they sat and drew all over themselves with the henna, and they talked longer and more honestly about things than they had in a long, long time. They fell asleep together on the couch, and when Scout woke up to Pyro’s arms tight around him, he felt better than he had in ages.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> _end of arc_  
> 


	98. resolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> directly follows "nine years"

Pauling had fled to the guest room. The boys were curled up together on the couch, tied up in each other, the way she’d always known them to be, but had never known why.

Well, now she knew why.

Pauling laid herself down on the bed, buried herself in the stiff, rarely used blankets, the cool, crisp sheets. She was only the fourth person ever to sleep here. Probably the first person ever to cry themselves to sleep here. The guest room had only ever had three guests in it.

Sniper had been the first, early on. Earlier than she would have liked, but he’d only called because he’d needed a favour. Somewhere to stay while he was stateside for a few days, some secretive assignment from the new job she’d helped him get. Pauling had offered him the guest room before she remembered that it wasn’t solely hers to offer. She’d backtracked, apologetically, and then haltingly explained about the boys.

“Both of ‘em? Well. Well, it’s...it’s good to hear. Ain’t heard anything ‘bout either of them, I just...well. How are they?”

Miss Pauling had paused. How were they. _Well, Pyro is the emotional equivalent of a wasps nest dipped in napalm. And I made the mistake of touching Scout while I had rubber gloves on and he had a massive panic attack and was frightened of me for the rest of the day and I have my suspicions, but I don't really know why. But we've all three of us started fucking each other, and that seems to help_. “They...they’re good. They’re fine. We're settling in. I think they just...I couldn’t find jobs for them, not like for the rest of the team. It’s tricky, you know, they’re both only about my age. None of us really have reputations like the rest of you--”

Sniper had chuckled quietly at this. “Them, maybe. I know about _your_ reputation, you never thought about coming back? To Australia? You’re a legend. The Battle of Ayers Rock _alone--_ ”

She had laughed, wryly. "No one ever believes me about that. Or New Zealand. Or the moon. I'm twenty-five and I'm retired. It suits me."

So, Sniper had broken in the guest room. Scout and Pyro had made themselves abruptly scarce, an impromptu camping trip in the woods. They said neither hello nor goodbye, which Pauling thought was the very pinnacle of rudeness, but which Sniper had more or less expected.

"Just the way the two of them got. Real cagey. I ain't got an opinion on the pair of 'em as... as a pair of 'em. But they got real closed off. Didn't ever wanna talk to the rest of the team. Surprised that they took up with you."

Miss Pauling was fairly sure that was the least of what would surprise Sniper about what they did with her, but there was no need for comment. “Well, I needed help out here. Between you and me, I think...I think maybe it was the wrong job. For the pair of them. I think it was harder, maybe, than they realized it would be. I never really knew Pyro. But Scout...he's different than I remember him."

Sniper had gotten a strangely grim expression. He spoke, at length, reluctantly, "Lotta the heart went outta him, when his leg went bad. Some glitch with respawn."

Miss Pauling had a knack for knowing when a thing was being talked about sideways, instead of head on. "I did always wonder. It wasn't ever on his record, or it would have been treated. Part of the contract, keep you all in the best shape possible. When did it happen?"

Then Sniper had gotten cagey. "Early on. Think he worked out some deal with Medic, kept him on the field. That's all I know for sure. You wanna talk to him 'bout anything more."

Well, but Sniper had left, and she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to know.

Demo visited the next year. Autumn. After it had all fallen apart and been patched back up, and made the three of them stronger than ever. They’d needed to have some fun. Demo was a bit of a wildcard, but both Scout and Noah had gone tearing out of the house when his car rolled up the driveway, cheerfully babbling at him about their house and the barn and the forest, and how’s his mother doing and did Demo wanna have a bonfire? With ghost stories? And this was met with roaring laughter and good natured wrestling and general boyishness. Pauling was appropriately demure in the reception of a sweeping bow and a kiss on the fingers, and then she was boosted unceremoniously over the Scotsman’s shoulder and hauled into the house.

There’d been catching up. There’d been long rambles through the woods, fishing in the pond. None of them had the heart to tell him that the pond didn’t have any fish. There’d been the discovery of the crab apple orchard, and the construction of a cider press. Demo had helped them bottle and brew sweet, fizzy cider. There’d been ridiculously late nights and early mornings and half the time Demo had just been snoring on the couch when Scout came down to make breakfast. They had bonfires nearly every night, roaring affairs with high and haunting tales of ghosts and monsters, a box of extremely illegal fireworks were procured. Watching the three mercenaries, bellowing and laughing about the good old days, Pauling had wondered what made Demo different from Sniper.

She found out, driving Demo to the airfield at the edge of town, where he was catching a chartered Cessna out to Texas, to look in on Engie.

“Lass, I can’t thank ye enough for takin’ the pair of ‘em in. I’d talked to Snipes, ‘round about this time last year, and he didn’t see hide nor hair of ‘em. Had only your word to go on, and it’s not that I don’t _trust_ ye. But I’m glad to’ve seen ‘em myself. Weren’t neither of them belonged in this line of work, lass.”

Pauling had known to tread carefully, after how closemouthed Sniper had gotten. She had stood outside her truck, huddling in her cardigan against the rising October wind, her arms folded close around her. “I think I should have known that a lot sooner. I think I could have spared the both of them a lot, if I’d known what to look for.”

Demo had shaken his head. “Weren’t your responsibility. There’s things a man owes to his teammates. Pyro was the one came to me, said Scout had started drinkin’. Nothin’ wrong with a man needing a drink in this line’a work, I’d told him, but no. No, he didn’t mean ‘started drinkin’’, was just that was all he could bring himself to say. He meant ‘was killin’ himself near every other night with drinkin’.’ An’ that’s a horse of a different colour.”

“Oh my god,” Pauling had murmured softly. “I knew...I’d figured out that there was something...something with respawn, maybe that he’d gotten...I don’t know, hooked on it. Or something. But it’s not like that, is it? It’s not a thing that’s pleasant, not a thing you want to do.”

“Thing you do when you have to,” Demo had grunted, and looked her square in the eye. “I never asked him why he thought he had to. But with the drink, lass. When that boy’s deep in his liquor, there’s a part of him wants letting out. I get the sense you’ve seen it. Be aware of what you’re huntin’ lass, that’s all I’ll caution you. There’s things darker than you know in the wilds within men like us.”

That had been a hint. The conversation had dropped. Demo had given her a hug and a kiss goodbye, and puttered off across a field in a Cessna, headed for Texas.

Pauling had gone home, to her boys, with their cheerful attitudes and their telling and retelling of all Demo’s stories, and she’d resolved not to let them get too drunk. They didn’t, really. None of the three of them drank as though they were serious about it, not really. Only Scout, that one time. With the chicken coop, That was maybe the sort of thing Demo meant. That was the sort of thing that Scout could keep to himself, safe and hidden away. There was no need to go hunting for that.

But Heavy, in their third year. Pauling had invited Heavy because he was one of her dearest and oldest friends. This has been a surprise to Scout and Noah, who hadn’t known she’d been corresponding with the taciturn Russian for the entire time they’d lived at the farmhouse. She had broached his visit tentatively, because he was visiting. He had promised he would. She didn’t know just went to expect him, but he would be there. And Scout had shut down. Scout hadn’t wanted anything to do with Heavy, vehemently protesting the intrusion.

In the end, though, there was Misha. Just before the first snow flew, November. And it was Pauling who’d gone tearing out of the house and thrown herself into the hug, damning Heavy’s protests about his age and his back. She’d been all adoration and chatter, girlish. She never got to be girlish, never treated Scout or Noah like big brothers, for obvious reasons. Neither of them had known it about her, that she was fiercely fond of Heavy.

It was Pauling who had chattered to him over dinner, about her beautiful house and her eclectic collection of mostly failed hobbies, her painting and her knitting and her grave rubbings--that one she at least was proud of, she’d gathered them all into a scrapbook, and she’d dragged it out and shown him. Misha had rumbled patiently, how nice they were. His dear friend, how she remembered the dead, how sweet she was.

Scout had even made the effort, eventually, and she’d been so glad. She remembered pressing up against him that night, thanking him, all kisses and cuddling, telling him it hadn’t been that bad, of course it hadn’t. Wasn’t it good to see him, dear old Heavy? Scout had just nodded, sighed and kissed her hair. Noah was snoring beside them, as Noah tended to do. Heavy had politely spent one night in their too-small-in-retrospect guest bed, then opted to sleep in the barn. Heavy was fond of barns, and none of them had pressed him about it. It led to fewer awkward questions, not that Heavy would have asked them.

Scout had said something, though. Something that had caught in her mind at the time, because it had annoyed her. “Fat ol’ bastard always did know how to keep his mouth shut, dunno what I ever expected.”

He’d dropped off to sleep, shortly afterward. Pauling had just lain awake, curled up against him, annoyed.

They had all three of them gathered to say goodbye to Heavy, a blustery day, icy pellets of snow stinging through the air. Scout hadn’t worn a jacket, he hunched his shoulders stuffed his hands in his pockets, said he was fine, they were only saying goodbye.

Heavy had looked at Scout, particularly, when he finally spoke. “We are comrades, all of us. The team. To be comrades is to believe that you are in the company of great men, brave men. Men who will die beside you. To have comrades, you must choose to believe the best of them. We are all of us great men. We have done many great things. _All_ of us. But to be comrades, we must never ask to know the worst of each other. This destroys a team. This kills a man’s comrades. I would not ask for the worst of you. I think though, that you know the worst of me.”

Scout had stared at him, then turned on his heel and fled into the house. Noah had managed a halfway polite goodbye and then gone after him.

Pauling had turned to Heavy, to apologize, but he was staring down at her gravely. And then, non-sequitur, “The Doctor. His journals, the studies he has done. They are interesting. He is a brilliant man. You must read them. They are the work of a great man. Goodbye, kind girl. Do not think too poorly of your friend the Heavy. He is not a great man. He has only loved his comrades, _all_ of them, brave men. Great men.”

She’d said goodbye. She’d done as he’d asked. Read the journals. Read them again. Medic was brilliant, yes. The dates though. When had he found the time, the resources. Pauling was clever. Pauling had seen the shape of the answer, the ghost of it hanging around her boys, her poor boys.

She hadn’t ever wanted to ask, but New Year’s came. And she had gotten the boys drunk, and they’d let her. Noah with his sad blue eyes, and his quiet, secret gentleness. The sort that had been eaten out of him by rage, somehow. Scout with his scars all painted over in dark, mahogany brown. Pauling had always wondered about his scars, the ones he hadn’t made himself. She'd wondered about the one on his chest, the faint, improbable line from his collarbone down his sternum.

She wished she hadn’t needed to know, but her last New Year's resolution hadn't worked out. She had wanted to learn how to sew, and had just never found the time or the inclination. Pauling was starting to admit to herself that the lifestyle that went along with a farmhouse in the Oregon countryside really didn't suit her. Pauling wasn't suited to making soft things like scarves or quilts or blankets. Baking had been a happy accident. Falling in love with her boys had been a lucky, impossible chance. There was one more wall between them, though, and Pauling had resolved to make this the year she kicked it down and found out what they'd been keeping her from.

Pauling wasn't sure what would happen after that.


	99. smile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> directly follows "resolution"

It wasn’t like Pauling to let things lie. She hadn’t said a word, after Scout had fallen silent. She’d just left. That was probably for the best. Scout had just nestled his face in the hollow of Noah’s shoulder, closed his eyes with a shuddering sigh, and dropped out of the world. Noah had just sniffled tearily for a while, burying his fingers in Scout’s hair. Then he had kissed him and shuffled around on the couch, until they were both lying down, passably comfortable.

Overhead, he heard Pauling open and close the guest room door. That made sense. The bed they shared was lonely when it was empty of anyone else. It had been a strange night. Noah felt weirdly empty. Not bad, or at least, not bad like he’d expected to feel. Just empty. He thought about this for longer than he meant to, lying awake, holding Scout close, the way he had used to, a long time ago. He tried to imagine what the next morning would be like, and failed.

Noah woke up first, and was fully prepared to handle Pauling, whenever she made her way downstairs. Noah was slightly thirsty, had a bit of a headache, could do to stretch his legs and have some toast, but that was all. A long time ago, Noah had been accused of using some sort of ancient Scottish curse to transfer the full weight of his hangovers onto Scout. This was a long, _long_ time ago, back when that was the sort of joke Scout used to make. Around nine years ago. Scout was still fast asleep, but he’d have a hangover. Scout got _vicious_ hangovers, and long, long ago Noah had made fun of him. Then Noah had learned about the limits of his partner’s tolerance for pain, and stopped making fun of him. He was well aware that the kindest thing to do was to let him sleep as long as possible.

Pauling came down the stairs with a suitcase in hand. Noah hadn't expected that. The phone rang. Noah hadn't expected that either. No one ever really called them. It rang again and Scout groaned faintly, stirring against Noah's chest before Pauling answered it. Her voice was soft, low, when she did.

"Hello? ... Yes. Yes, thank you. Ten minutes, then. And your contact in London can put me in touch with...? Good. Thank you, Bidwell. Good morning."

 _Bidwell?_ Noah wasn’t sure he could say anything without waking Scout, and he really didn’t want to, if it weren’t necessary. He settled for looking up at her, over the back of the couch, quizzically.

Pauling circled round, sat down next to the couch. Not just a suitcase, but her dark plum trenchcoat, Burberry, plum coloured tweed, double breasted. A Christmas gift, Noah had picked it out, had it tailored. Her travelling clothes. She looked impeccable.

“I’m going to go away for a while,” she said softly, reaching over, cradling Noah’s face. That was different. Pauling had a gentle side, a tenderness to her, but Noah wasn’t the one who really saw it. Pauling didn’t have much softness about her, and she’d always seemed to save it all for Scout. Noah didn’t mind, Scout had always needed it more than he did, and the things he liked best about Pauling were hard and sharp and dangerous, anyway.

“Why?” Noah whispered. “If it’s...with what we said last night. Pauling, nothing has to happen. Nothing has to change, maybe...probably he won’t even remember. God knows he’s got his damage, but with respawn...it’s just the limp, really, that’s all that’s left. That’s what’s always made it okay, he really doesn’t _remember_ most of it. I mean...I _do_ , but it’s over now, it’s fine. We’re fine, and a lot of that’s thanks to you. This wasn’t your fault and you don’t need to do anything.”

“Shh.” Pauling pushed up her knees, leaned over and kissed Noah lightly. “I’m going to go away for a while,” she repeated, gently brushing her fingers through Scout’s hair. “Take care of him, and my chickens. I love you, both of you.”

And then she was gone. And Noah felt Scout’s fingers tighten, grasping the collar of his t-shirt. He wondered how long a while was. He wondered if Pauling would even be back. He wondered how much Scout had heard.

* * *

 

“It’s an odd request, Miss Pauling.”

“Yes, ma’am. I know. I told you the reasons.”

“It’s your retirement.”

“I know, ma’am. It’s mine to use however I want, though. That’s all I need to establish.”

Those familiar dark eyes, peering at her. Ageless. “Do you think I’m a monster, Miss Pauling? With what I’ve offered to you?”

“No, ma’am.” _I know it_. “But I think it’s a thing that a monster would want.”

The smile she’d grown to respect, if never to actually like. Respect was better, anyway. “I’ve always liked it about you, Miss Pauling, that you’re a little bit of a fiend. It’s always made you very useful.”

“...thank you, ma’am. I’ll consider that your permission.”

“Consider it my blessing.”

* * *

 

Scout had half-remembered telling her about everything. He’d never dreamt that Miss Pauling would have just _left_ , though. He had a vague recollection of Pyro saying something to her, but he’d been barely awake, still muddled up and  why hadn’t she said goodbye? Had she said goodbye? Pyro would remember. Pyro never got hangovers, Scout had used to joke that he got his own hangovers doubled on Pyro’s behalf. That hadn’t been funny in about nine years.

Pyro had been splitting wood, stacking it outside a shed behind the house, when Scout crept outside. Pyro had left him asleep on the couch, after sitting outside the bathroom while he finished throwing up. After getting him water and dry toast and some juice to get his blood sugar back up. After explaining what he knew about Pauling, making promises Scout didn’t know if Pyro could even _keep._ But ithad been to make Scout stop clinging to him and begging to know why she’d left. Pyro didn’t know, but he’d gently reminded Scout of what had been said last night. Pyro had been working on it, being nicer. He was getting lots better. He’d settled Scout back down on the couch, with aspirin and another glass of water and a blanket. Rubbed Scout’s back until he’d started to relax, calm down. He didn’t remember falling asleep. He remembered the way she'd looked at him, though, the way she'd gone still, numb. Her eyes.

If it had helped that might have been one thing, but of course it hadn’t. He felt worse. Possibly worse than ever, because he’d been talked into trusting Miss Pauling, and it had been a big, big mistake.

Scout had stumbled a little on his way down the hill behind the house, and dropped to sit on a log, half buried in snow. New snow, fresh, covered everything in pure white. A new year, heavy grey skies. He didn’t know what hour of the day it was, caught out of time without the sun overhead. But it was blindingly bright, worsened Scout’s headache a hundredfold, and made him think of being trapped in the limbo of respawn. And Miss Pauling was gone. This last was what made him feel sick, worse than the hangover, worse than the memory of respawn.

“I dunno why we thought we hadta tell her,” he managed, finally, his voice shaking. “Only made her think she hadta go.”

Noah swung his axe, embedded it in the chopping block with a thud. He trudged through the snow, hooded, with his scarf pulled up and his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Masked and bug-eyed he looked a lot like Scout remembered him, back on RED, only the hoodie he wore beneath his jacket now was clear, sky blue. Pyro sat down next to him, leaned his head on Scout’s shoulder. “I think she’ll be back.”

“She did this b-before. Remember? She left. And then _you_ left. Oh...god, y-you ain’t gonna leave, are you? Please don’t. _Please_ don’t leave.”

Pyro had taken his hand, shushed him. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me now.”

“But, Miss Pauling, though. Now she just _knows_ . We... _fuck_. You an’ me an’ all our bullshit. We’re really fucked up. Me ‘n you.”

Beside him, Pyro sniffled, laughed. “Yeah. No, yeah, we really are. She doesn’t deserve the pair of us. But we don’t have anywhere else to go.” He paused. “And someone has to take care of her chickens.”

* * *

 

“About last night…”

“We’re not talking about last night.” That settled it. It wasn’t the first time Pauling had said it, and it had always settled things before, even if _this_ last night had been different.

“...well. I should have said, when you first called me. Lorraine and I split up.”

“Lorraine.”

“My wife.”

“Oh! Oh. I’m sorry.” A pause. “Was it my fault?”

A longer pause. “Your contact should meet you in Switzerland. You’ll be directed to a mineral spa in the alps. Past that, Mann Co. can have no further involvement.”

“Of course, I understand. Thank you, Mr. Bidwell.” She smiled, as though that would mean something. It didn't, but none of it ever really had.

“You’re welcome, Miss Pauling.”

* * *

 

“Yeah…but…Bidwell, though.”

Pauling didn’t take up a great deal of room, but the bed still felt empty without her. And Scout didn't have anyone else to talk to, without her there.

Noah groaned, buried his face in Scout’s shoulder. Noah wasn’t naturally a cuddler. That was usually Pauling’s job, but they were both lonely without her. It had taken them a long time to figure out which spoon was which.

And now Noah really regretted mentioning that Bidwell had called, because Scout wouldn’t drop it. He was working him into a fit of paranoia about Bidwell. All Noah really knew about Pauling and Bidwell was that the sex had been bland. “Look. You know more than me about Pauling and Bidwell. You and her had that fight about Bidwell, and it was a _motherfucker_ of a fight, Scout. I’ve seen Pauling _furious_ , and I’ve never seen her as mad as she was at you when you wouldn’t stop giving her shit about Bidwell. I never knew why you wanted to pick a fight with her about fucking Bidwell.”

“...y’think she’s mad at me?” Scout paused. “Was ‘cuz she was _way_ hung up on him. Like, seriously. You always fell asleep, but used t’be Miss Pauling wouldn’t _ever_ shut up about fuckin’ _Bidwell_.”

“She...you know she didn’t _love_ him, right?” Noah didn’t actually know this for certain. Pauling had never really talked to him about Bidwell. That had been Scout’s department. He knew it about Pauling that it had taken her a long time to really come to terms with having more than just sex with the both of them.

“Nah. Pauling, though, man she gets real fucked up ‘bout that kinda shit. Almost makes it worse, y'know? IF she'd been in love with him, that I coulda figured for eatin' at her. But she wasn't, though. He asked her t’marry him, she ever tell you that?

Noah yawned, pointedly. Kissed Scout on the forehead, maybe that would be a hint. Bed was for sleeping. Long, drawn out conversations about Pauling’s ex-lover were fine. Great, even. Noah was totally down to talk shit about Bidwell. In the daylight hours. “No, she never did. I don’t think she’s doing anything with Bidwell.”

“An’ he had a _wife_. Was cheatin’ on her with Pauling the whole damn time. I gave her hell ‘bout that, ‘cuz she ain’t ever understood that it was a shitty thing t’do.”

 _Oh god damn it._ “Well...I think that’s debatable.”

“...what.”

 _Shit, I am sleeping on the couch. We don’t need to have this fight. I can shut up right now. I don’t care about Bidwell or why he was fucking Pauling. I don’t know why Bidwell was fucking Pauling. I am not invested in this. This is Pauling's fight, not mine, they already had this fight, I don't need to.._. “You don’t know anything about Bidwell’s marriage. Or his wife. Maybe she was a harpy. Maybe she was...I dunno, some frigid bitch or something. I’m just saying. Pauling’s a hell of a fuck. I sure would’ve had a hard time turning her down, if I’d been in Bidwell’s situation. Hypothetically.”

“Bidwell’s _situation_.”

 _Fuck._ “ Well, _hypothetically_ , though.”

“If you’re framin’ a fuckin’ _hypothetical_ situation that’s got me as your frigid bitch wife, then Pyro, what the _fuck_.”

Noah was backpedaling ferociously now, because he hated to sleep on the couch. “...I’m just playing devil’s advocate, here.”

“Yeah, right, an’ you can go play it on the fucking couch.”

“I didn’t mean…”

“ _Couch_.”

It wasn’t as though it mattered, in the end. Scout got lonely only ten minutes after Noah had left, and before he was even all the way settled down, Scout had come storming down the stairs, and flung himself on top of his partner with a muttered, "Not a fuckin' word."

* * *

 

“If one more mincing Swiss _wellness expert_ tries to bring me a calming herbal tea, I’m going taint their entire stock with monkshood. Give _you_ something to do, if you’re so bored. Pick your favourite masseur. See if you can save him.”

This solicited a dry, teutonic chuckle. “...Fraulein, if this holiday was mandated due to stress from overwork, I think perhaps it is not having its intended effect?”

“If you came here to try and claw back some of your youth, _Herr Doktor_ , then I don’t think there are enough chemical peels and mudbaths in Switzerland.”

“...ahh, you have come to be cruel to a poor old man. I am here because my blood pressure troubles me. I think, perhaps, my worn out old heart cannot take such unkindness from such a poisonous little woman.”

“Well. _Truthfully_ , there was another reason why I came. Maybe you’re closer to guessing than you’d think.”

“Oh? Not just to delight me with your particularly morbid charm?”

She smiled. She’d learned a lot about smiling from the Administrator. “Maybe, but only a little bit that. I had actually hoped to ask you a few things about my retirement. It’s...well. It’s delicate. Classified, still, but I really can’t explain all the details here. I can only really say that our mutual history is part of the reason you’re really one of the only people I can consult with.”

He smiled back. Not the sort of smile Pauling liked, but she’d gotten good at smiling when she didn’t want to. “You intrigue me, Miss Pauling. Do go on.”

 


	100. eggshell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> directly follows "smile"

That had been the first day.

They got by okay, on the second. Pyro fed the chickens and Scout got to the laundry they’d been putting off for weeks. For lack of much else to do they cleaned the house, and by the end of the third day the place was spotless.

Except for their room. Neither of them had really felt like going back in, it turned out. It felt too big and too empty with just two people.

So, the fourth day.

On the fourth day Scout was making breakfast. Nothing special, he was tired and worried and didn’t have energy for anything more intensive than pancakes and fried ham and sliced strawberries. Pyro had been quiet all morning, too, and avoiding him. That was what it had felt like, anyway.

In retrospect Scout should have seen it coming. He’d sort of shoved Pyro’s plate in front of him and turned away to go finish cutting up the strawberries. He was halfway through when a frigid, snarling, “What the _fuck,_ ” cut through the air.

Oh, no. Please, no, not today.

“There’s fucking _eggshell_ in here, Scout, I thought you were supposed to be _good_ at cooking.”

Pyro had that weird tone in his voice, the sharp, too-angry one that sounded wrong in his mouth because it wasn’t really him speaking. It was something Scout could read off of him instantly, and the way he said it told Scout he could go either way, depending on what Scout did next. This was a tirade he could avoid.

But Scout was an idiot, so of course he just said, “Then make your own goddamn pancakes.”

There was a smash as a plate shattered on the floor. That had been one of Scout’s favorite goddamn plates. Damn it. Just _damn it—_

Scout carefully put the knife down and pushed it out of reach as he heard Pyro get to his feet. He turned, staring Pyro down as he stormed toward him. The monster that looked like his boyfriend was snarling, spitting out vitriol fit to kill, _asshole_ and _fucking moron_ and _cocksucker_. Pyro raised a hand in a fast, harsh movement, a gesture Scout recognized as the lead-in to a backhanded slap.

Scout’s exhaustion caught fire.

Scout was still fast. Scout still had reflexes honed by a lifetime of the desire not to be beaten to death. And Scout had been clawing his way back out of his shell for four years now. He ducked the open palm Pyro had swung at his face. Caught him by the arm and swung, a sharp right hook to the face. Pyro lurched sideways with a grunt, staggering, but he didn’t even get a chance to speak before Scout was on him again. This time he grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him against the wall before pulling him back again and shoving him backwards.

“I’m so fuckin’ goddamn sick’a you,” he growled, stalking after as Pyro stumbled and nearly fell. “You stupid piece’a shit, ya _idiot_ , can’t ever give me a break, can’t hold onto your own goddamn head for a _fucking_ day, can you. Callin’ me names, fuck you, Pyro, I don’t care how fuckin’ far gone you are, you don’t got any business callin’ _anybody_ _anythin’_.”

Pyro had gotten his balance back. Scout slugged him in the gut and got a pained wheeze, but this time Pyro caught hold of his arm, dug his nails into it. Scout snarled, Pyro roared, and then they were grappling, clawing and snapping like dogs.

Scout did not even register the blows to his arms and ribs or the scratches raked across his skin. He was furious, now, he was blazing mad, and he’d been in more fistfights than Pyro ever had or ever would. Overpowering Pyro down was easy, once Scout got an opening. Kneeing him in the gut was easier, making him curl up like a wounded animal, and by then Scout was hardly even thinking when he grabbed him by the hair and slammed him down on the table.

Pyro yelped and crumpled.

Scout leapt back, waiting for him to get back up and charge him again. He’d needed a fight, this was exactly what he fucking needed, and he was going to goddamn win.

But Pyro did not get up.

He stayed where he’d fallen, limp and still, and Scout could see blood trickling from his nose. His expression was blank.

An icy chill shot through Scout’s body, one a lot like the chill he’d felt almost ten years ago, in Boston, in an alleyway with Gabe. “P–Pyro?” he said, fists uncurling. No answer. Shit. Oh, _shit_ —“Pyro, c’mon, say something. _Pyro_ —”

He was given a weak, breathy groan. Slowly, Pyro pushed himself up. Scout felt relief rush through him, followed by nausea. Oh, God. He was an idiot. “Pyro?”

Pyro looked at him, first dazed and then frightened. He pulled back when Scout reached for him. For a few seconds he just sputtered, like he was trying to speak around a mouthful of marbles. “Stp. Stoppit! _Hurts._ G’ _way_.” His nose still bled, vibrant red against his pale skin, staining a crimson patch in his beard.

Scout dropped his hand, the blood suddenly pounding in his ears. “I’m … ’m sorry,” he said lamely, reaching out again. “I didn’t … fuck. Pyro—”

“Go _’way_!” Pyro said, swiping at the offered hand.

That did it. Scout stared at him a few seconds longer, then got unsteadily to his feet and stumbled out of the kitchen.

 

* * *

 She would have sworn she heard his joints creaking as he folded himself into the passenger seat beside her. A faint sigh. "My dear, old age is no joy."

"You do look in such good shape, though. Mineral spas in Switzerland help with that, I suppose." She was driving. She hated to drive anything that wasn't her truck, and this was a low-slung coupe that she'd rented at the airport in Santa Fe. She liked her truck, in her truck she was high up, a force to equal every other car on the road. She hated a car that made her feel her smallness. "And...well. I hope it's not rude to say, but with respawn--I never really understood how that factored in. If it made you all younger or older than you really were." A beat of silence. "I've never done it."

"It's an inexplicable experience, Fraulein. I don't recommend it." He paused for a lot longer. "I would say...it keeps you young in one way. Ages you in another. It is incomparable. I did it as rarely as possible, I had the luxury of that control. It is a very cruel thing to put someone through. As a doctor, you understand. First; do no harm."

"Mmm. Hypocrites?"

That dry, teutonic laugh. " _Hippocrates_ , my dear girl."

"Oh, of course." She smiled. A soft laugh of her own. "How silly of me. Of course."

* * *

 

After Scout left, Noah stayed on the floor for a while. His nose was bleeding and he hurt kind of everywhere, and he was having a hard time remembering what had provoked Scout. It had to have been himself, there wasn’t any other logical explanation.

But—but Scout had never torn into him like that before. Just thoroughly beaten his ass, because Noah knew he got stupid when he snapped and Scout could always stay one step ahead of him.

But he was sitting on the floor with a bloody nose and what felt like would become a black eye, and a split lip, and the memory of Scout snarling in his face.

All told, it took Noah about forty-five minutes to start to pull himself back together. He did not especially remember getting up, or picking up the shattered plate and fallen pancakes. (He thought about eating them. He was hungry. But he put them in the trash instead.) He did have vague impressions of wiping his face off and putting something cold against his eye, a wet washcloth filled with ice. He was still holding this last against his face when he made his unsteady way outside, into the snow.

The barn door was ajar. Noah didn’t want to go in.

But he did. Of course he did.

 

* * *

 Thunder Mountain. It was always going to be Thunder Mountain, but there was a sweetness to the coincidence. She knew every inch of Thunder Mountain.

"Well, you have to understand the necessity for secrecy. I wasn't paid nearly what you all were, and so much of the technology was experimental at the time." She paused, let him catch up with her. She was half his age, and pretending not to notice that he was huffing slightly. The altitude, surely. "The Medigun, there were so many variables. Honestly, I think a lot of the reason TFI folded was because of poor management by Mann Co. TFI was always meant to be a venue for developing technologies. Like the teleporters. The Medigun. Respawn. Just a venue for experimentation."

"Yes, well. Of course, the cause of science. A noble pursuit, Fraulein. I must confess, I had never imagine you would be so sympathetic to the cause." He smiled. "You will forgive me, of course, in hindsight. I had always rather considered you to be the Administrator's little errand girl."

"Oh," she laughed, and keyed a code into the door of the respawn chamber. She'd already restarted the generator, booted up the old computer mainframe, with its terabytes of data. "Well, more or less, that's what I was. I just did whatever was needed. I did always wish I'd known more about what was going on here, though. I had such a great deal of respect for the work I knew was being done." She glanced over her shoulder, straightened her glasses and bit her lip. "I was a little embarrassed to mention," she admitted, shyly. "But I read some of your journal articles. I had them translated. Oh, they lose so much from the original German, I can tell. But even then, they're _brilliant._ I had no idea."

"Fraulein Pauling! You flatter me." His teeth flashed at her, yellowed. "Oh, but you must tell me your favourite parts."

"Business first, Herr Doctor. You're here to consult with me on the matter of my retirement plan, remember?" She flashed her own teeth in answer. "But then, of course, pleasure."

* * *

 

Idiot. _Stupid._ Fucking _jackass moron._

Once the torrent of self-flagellation began Scout could not stop it. It had followed him out to the barn, an endless rush in his ears. He hated this barn, he _hated it_ and everything that had happened in it. The noise ate at him and he could only think of one thing that would stem it.

When Noah found him an hour later, Scout was wondering if he’d fucked up. He’d … gone deeper than usual. Usually he limited himself in threes, but multiples of three worked, too. He should have taken his shirt off before doing this but he hadn’t thought he would go so far, and it was a _white_ shirt, too, hell. And the peroxide wasn’t out here. He’d taken it inside last week, trying to prevent himself from pulling this shit again. Hilarious.

And of course he couldn’t go back inside covered in his own blood. Even if Pyro knew, now, that didn’t mean Scout wanted him to _see._

Yeah, so much for that.

Scout had been halfway to the door when Pyro nudged it open. Pyro was holding a bag of ice to his eye and still had flecks of red in his beard. Scout, ten feet away, was covered in blood, even dripping it now and then, shaky on his feet and red around the eyes from an hour’s crying.

“… Um,” Scout started.

By then Pyro looked like he was thirty seconds off bolting into the woods. He was grinding his teeth, shifting his weight, backing up. His eyes were fixed on Scout’s arms, but there was nothing behind them. “Hey,” Scout called in a low, shaky voice. “Pyro. Chief? Y-you hear me?”

His gaze flickered to Scout’s face for a fraction of a second. His pupils were blown out entirely. Scout took an awkward step backwards, and Pyro made a pitiful, choked sort of noise. Scout swallowed. “Pyro. Hey, man, it’s—it’s not so bad as it looks. Okay? I’m … I’m fine. Go back inside.”

Pyro made a noise that was almost a word, garbled. His hands shook. Scout risked another step backward. “Pyro—”

In front of him, Pyro dropped the icepack. It fell to the ground with a crunch. It may as well have been a gunshot. Pyro whirled on his heel, stumbled in the snow, and bolted for the woods.

 

* * *

"You mean to tell me...this is your _retirement_? I confess, I was never told how the machine worked. I had my theories, of course, but I was never permitted to..."

"Well, you were paid several million dollars more than I was, annually." She ran a hand over the controls, the console. She'd inputted a few commands, shuffled a few files around. Changed a few settings. "I was the Administrator's protege. I was a back up plan. I was nowhere near ready, of course. TFI was supposed to go on for far longer than it did. I never really knew what her plans were. But if she would have asked me to continue _ad infinitum_ , I was prepared to do it. She made me who I am today. This was always what I was promised, if I wanted it."

"It would make you..."

"Twenty-five. I'm nearly thirty now. I mean, it's only four years. But it's four years now. It would be fifteen if I were forty. It's as many years as I want, whenever I want them, for as long as I want. Right now it's four years, and I'm already getting crow's feet." Again her silly, crystalline little laugh. "I'm terribly vain. It's my secret sin." She hardened her tone. "But to  _business_ though. In all honestly, I brought you here because this is all I have, and I'm _afraid_. I've never done it before, my data was put in just before everything folded. There were twenty mainframes allotted to the system, nine for RED, nine for BLU, and two backups. One of them is mine. I don't really know what will happen, and...well. I'm a terrible coward. I asked you here for your help, or just...even just your supervision. Would you be willing...?"

"My dear child. Of course. For all I've said, the machine is still a miracle. The worst you will feel is some mild illness for perhaps an hour afterward. The experience itself is not pleasant, and of course I have heard of no one using respawn after such a length of time. The implications are fascinating, naturally, but I will not trouble you with them. They are largely technical. Four years is nothing to trifle over. In fact, if it would reassure you..." He let the suggestion hang in the air. She could feel him, hoping she wasn't as silly as she sounded.

Her green eyes widened, all innocence and surprise. "Oh! Oh, of course. I should have offered. Would you? You wouldn't mind?"

* * *

 

It was a dark, overcast day, at least, Scout thought as he trudged back into the house. He couldn’t go after him, not with his arms fucked up like they were. This was all his fault.

That was all he told himself, the rest of that day. He would _have_ to go in after Pyro if he wasn’t back by dark. The dumbass might have broken his leg or something, and anyway he was almost certainly sunburned now. Pyro couldn’t take care of himself even if there was a gun to his head.

Neither of them could, really, he thought as he sat in Pauling’s old bedroom, in the window that overlooked the forest’s edge. Pauling had been gone for just four days, and his forearms were in shreds and he’d beaten up his boyfriend and scared him off into the woods.

… dammit.

Scout was half asleep when he saw the small, dirty figure standing at the treeline that had eluded his notice. He cussed and got to his feet. Limp or not, Scout could still pour the speed on when he really wanted to.

Scrambling out the door, he met Pyro midway across the lawn. He was filthy and shivering badly, skin pink where the sun had touched it. His black eye had gotten worse. Scout skidded to a halt in front of him, suddenly at a loss for words. Pyro, too, just looked at him. His eyes fell to Scout’s wrists, and suddenly all Scout wanted to do was hide. “… Well,” Pyro said, slowly, “I don’t know about you, but I miss Pauling.”

Scout managed a faint laugh. “Always told her she oughta stop swoopin’ in, savin’ us. That maybe oughta we’d better be left getting each other fuckin’ ruined, maybe’d teach us a lesson.”

“I don’t think we learned anything we didn’t already know.”

“About how we’re a couple of fuckups?”

“Yeah,” Pyro said wearily, dropping his head against Scout’s shoulder and heaving a shuddering sigh as bandaged arms were wrapped around him.

 

* * *

 She couldn't remember if it was Scout or Noah who'd given her the blackjack. Quite possibly it had been a joint gift. It had been after they'd both found out about her...well. Her sidejob? Her hobby? They were dear boys, to worry about her. Of course they wouldn't really understand. Both of them had plenty of pain on their own. The fact that sometimes she needed to grind her heels into people's faces and step on fingers and not be  _touched_ by lustful fools who thought of her  _the wrong way_. Well. Scout and Noah knew her better than anyone, by this point. Except the Admininstrator, maybe.

That was always something that had rankled at her. Scout had called her the scary kind of pretty, once. A long time ago. She'd actually heard it from Noah, secondhand. She smiled. Decided that the little lump of lead wrapped in leather had been a joint gift. This was the first time she'd used it. She had only needed to use it the once, an expert crack to the back of the neck. She slipped it back it into her pocket. Her boys.

The pair of pliers weren't anything special. She'd found them lying on a table, pocketed them on her way in. They were rusted, ugly things. But they'd serve.

Medic was slackjawed on the floor. Then there'd been the length of nylon cord Miss Pauling kept in her purse at all times. She was an expert with knots like that, she'd grown up on a farm. It wasn't like anyone would ask her for  _proof_.

Still, Miss Pauling felt it was rude to go on a trip and not return with souvenirs. Even just keychains. She had been wanting to get a nice new pair of earrings, herself.

She clicked the jaws of the pliers open and shut several times, working the rustiness from them. Smiled.

"Hold still," she murmured, and went about her morbid business.

* * *

 

Pauling called, two days later. Scout had managed to keep it together on the phone, though when Pyro asked him he’d broken down with relief a little bit. “Dinner,” he said between breaths, “said she’d be back by dinner time.”

An immediate panic was raised when they realized neither of them had remembered to check on the hens. The hens were fine, even friendlier than usual with their excitement to see people. Scout still didn’t like birds, but Pauling’s hens were okay. One hopped up onto his knee as Pyro finished feeding them, clucking and fluffing out its feathers against the cold. It pressed right up against his stomach, and made no fuss when he tentatively stroked its cold back. Yeah, chickens were alright. None of Pauling’s were pure white, anyway.

The hens taken care of, they darted back inside, chattering and boosting their spirits. They’d have to explain Pyro’s black eye and cut lip, and why Scout’s forearms were wrapped up. They played with increasingly extravagant lies until they figured it would be best just to tell her the truth, and Scout took an hour and a half to decide what to make for dinner.

By the time Pauling would arrive home, exhausted and shivering and grim, there would be a vast feast on the table, with Pyro’s good whiskey and the spiced rum that was Pauling’s favorite. The boys would run out to meet her, sweeping her off her feet and carrying her back inside. They would talk about the hens and the new snow and how glad they were to have her back.

And they would not, any of them, talk about where Pauling had gone.

  
 

* * *

**THE END**

* * *

 

Our endless thanks to our friends and followers on Tumblr for their support and love, and apparent willingness to fall straight off the cliff with these three with us. Thank you so much for reading.

 _First, Do No Harm_ concludes in  _Home_.


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